


Black Rain

by nirvhannahcornell (josiebelladonna)



Category: Original Work
Genre: 1990s, Abusive Relationships, Alchemy, Astrology, Courtroom Drama, Dark Comedy, F/M, Gallows Humor, High School, Inspired by Music, Law Enforcement, Mad Science, Poison, Sacred Geometry, Science, Science Fiction, goes from zero to horrifying in the span of a couple of chapters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-21
Updated: 2020-01-01
Packaged: 2021-02-27 04:41:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 18
Words: 76,117
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22071217
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/josiebelladonna/pseuds/nirvhannahcornell
Summary: 16-year-old Rowena Patterson is a regular California teenager in the 90s, that is until one day she uncovers a horrifying family secret that's also very close to home.
Kudos: 1





	1. The House on the Corner

**Author's Note:**

> Posted on the archive out of both principle (i.e., moving on from the 2010s) and to commemorate two years since I hit "save" on the final, edited chapter.
> 
> For the love of God... !!!DO NOT READ IF YOU ARE EASILY TRIGGERED!!!
> 
> I was attempting to build a literary world of my own back in April of 2016, so I had the characters in my arsenal, but since I was trying to also build my career as an artist, I couldn't exactly focus on them too much for months.  
> So I wrote this in September 2017, four months following the passing of Chris Cornell as my way of saying good-bye to him. I was also dealing with some rather ghastly things on the home front at that time, so please, please, _please_ take my word for it when I say this is without a doubt the most negative, intense, violent thing I have ever written down. In fact, it's so negative when I was done with it, I didn't put it on Wattpad for almost five months (and then I took it down to make that account strictly for fanfic). I put it on Tumblr for a bit, but now it's here on the archive for your viewing.  
> This is also kind of a love letter to my background as a science student, so expect loads of science-y stuff and logistics behind certain fantastic chemicals.  
> Again, please _do. not. read. if you are easily triggered._  
>  Fly high, Chris 🖤
> 
> _"Can't stutter when you're talking with your eyes,  
>  by cutting out your tongue you save face.  
> Feeding on the blood lets running from a black day.  
> cry on black rain, cry on black rain."_

Stars rained down from the pitch black sky as I stared out into the darkening ocean. I glanced all around me for signs of someone, anything, on the beach or on the stone balcony I stood upon. I peered down to see the silent waves down below at their barely gyrating. The shadow cast over me.

Her slender body floated over the ocean, a dark corpse shroud in pale white robes: the bottom hem glided over the water and her head rolled onto her shoulder. Her head was propped upright: in the dim light, I made out her gaunt pale face, her deep set black eyes gaping back at me like an enormous pair of black holes, and her stringy pitch black hair cascading over her shoulders and her face. She pointed one long narrow finger at me.

“Listen—” her raspy voice rang out as if she spoke through a tunnel. “—listen. Your soul's alive in a world gone dead.”

“What do you mean?” I asked the corpse.

“Your soul's alive in a world gone dead,” she repeated.

“Rowena!” I heard my mom call out. I shot open my eyes. Pale gray morning light filtered through my bedroom window and onto my face. The corpse, the stars falling from the sky, the ocean before me, it was just a dream. Mom hung over me, smelling clean and sweet. She pushed her dishwater blonde hair back into a duck's tail behind her head and wore her black velvet pantsuit. I rubbed my eyes.

“Huh? What is it?” my voice broke.

“Your father and I have to run some errands. There's a fresh pot of coffee in the kitchen—we'll be back in a few hours.”

“Okay—” I rubbed my eyes again just as she gave me a hug and then hurried into the hallway. I rolled onto my back and stared up at the ceiling for a brief moment before getting up to face the day.

January 3 marked seventeen years since I entered the world right here in Monterey, California. Starting from my freshman year, people at school referred to me as “little Debbie Harry” from my shoulder length thin blonde hair. My dad said I had eyes as blue as the sky and I was named Rowena after a seductress; he knew I was to grow up to be amazing. I was short but slim and svelte and with small hands and feet: I inherited my looks from Mom.

The front door shut as I sat upright, and swung my legs around to the edge of the bed, and stared at the framed picture of Keanu Reeves on my nightstand for a moment. My best friends Fiona Grey and Ashley Hansen gave me that photograph after we watched _Point Break_ together in the theater downtown over the summer and I placed it on the nightstand in such a way that he was the first thing I saw upon waking up in the morning. I bode him good morning as I set my feet on the carpet.

I reached for my royal blue bathrobe draped over the back of my reading chair only to spot a little black spider on the sleeve. I shook the sleeve before putting on the robe. I was used to spiders and pincher bugs, especially since my parents and I liked to garden.

My parents grew peaches, nicknamed “Patterson Peaches” after our last name and we deemed our slogan “eat a peach.” They were enormous juicy pearly white peaches the size of softballs that we'd sell to our neighbors for a few bucks, depending on how many they picked. Most thought it was far too cold to grow them, but the peaches always survived. Three trees stood together in the backyard in a right triangle, one of them grew peaches, one with lemons, and the third tucked in the corner had avocados; there was a second peach tree in the front yard in front of the dining room window.

When I was ten, I chose the avocado tree at a horticulture shop across the Bay in Santa Cruz. The tree was small and sparse and alone in the far corner of the yard. We brought the little tree home to the backyard and took good care of it. Within a month, the tree had sprouted taller than me. Four years later, it stood nearly twenty feet high with leaves the size of dinner plates and large, plump dark green avocados every year: my ultimate goal in life was to help the little guy and the defenseless. As for the avocados, I made guacamole and salsa, and sold some avocados to some of our neighbors. The lemons went into making lemonade, lemon meringue pie, and zest on fish.

I strode into the hallway towards the kitchen, where I was greeted by the smell of coffee. I peered out the big window to the front porch and at Mom's small charcoal gray Isuzu pick up truck still parked in the driveway, still without a camper shell. My dad drove a muted blue PT Cruiser and she had that truck. When I earned my driver's license, my parents trusted me enough that I could take either car for myself.

Everyone in Monterey knew my mother Hope Patterson could see the flipside to everything, as showed by her mystery and romance novels. On that same token, everyone in Monterey knew my father Matt Patterson would fight tooth and nail in court and win, and even go to Sacramento and the state supreme court. Everyone also knew them for being so prudent because they both grew up rationing even after the dust settled after World War II and the Great Depression. As a result, we lived comfortably and they gave me the good enough life they never had growing up.

I opened the cabinet with the coffee mugs and the cups and took the black bone china mug off the second shelf for a cup of coffee. As I poured in the vanilla creamer, I thought about taking the truck to go visit Fiona, even though she only lived three blocks away. She, Ashley, and my third best friend Mark Moore were all the year ahead of me: I decided to spend as much time as I could with them this year, even if we had strenuous classes.

I stared out the window at the peach tree and counted four ripe peaches on the branch closest to me. I glanced up at the clock on the wall at the time reading eight thirty.

I returned down the hallway to get dressed. Since I was the only one in the house, I left the door open as I put some clothes on.

I set the coffee mug on the nightstand as I opened my dresser drawer and searched for my black trousers and my Red Hot Chili Peppers top. Their new album _Blood Sugar Sex Magik_ dropped within a week and Dad promised me to take me to Cannery Row to pick it up on that day. They and Fleetwood Mac were my favorite bands, but I also adored Pink Floyd, Black Sabbath, Metallica, the Beatles, and Heart, and these new bands Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, and Alice in Chains. Fiona bought Pearl Jam's album _Ten_ two days before and I envied her because I couldn't hardly find it anywhere: she, Ashley, and I were excited for Nirvana and Soundgarden's albums to release, too.

I put on the shirt, my jeans, my black and purple striped socks, followed by my black Chuck Taylors. I ran the white comb atop of the dresser through my hair four times before slipping on my black peacoat and slinging my little white knit purse from the back of my desk chair over my shoulder. I hurried out the front door, swiping the key from the black and blue ceramic bowl on the stand next to the door on my way out. I locked the deadbolt on the door behind me before striding down to the driveway.

It was a chilly morning with misty dark gray low clouds; those four peaches were indeed ripe. I placed my purse on the passenger seat and the cup of coffee in the cup holder in between the center console and the shifter. I opened the glove compartment to check if Mom left any napkins in there. She tucked a handful of brown paper napkins in between the driver's manual and the pink slip.

I lined my hand with one napkin, then I raised myself onto my toes to pick the one closest to the house. I tugged at it before the stem loosened and snapped off the branch. Keeping the peach in the napkin, I slid it under my arm as I reached for the second and repeated it thrice more. I placed the peaches on the seat next to me before I climbed inside and shut the door. I cupped my hands to my mouth to warm up my palms.

I had lived on the Monterey Peninsula my whole life but sometimes the cold was too much for me. Fiona, her older brother William—or Billy as everyone called him—and their parents moved here from New Hampshire before I started kindergarten. Before then, I had only seen white caps of snow atop the Santa Lucia Mountains to the south, and the Coastal Range to the east, and my parents and I travelled to Mammoth Mountain for skiing but hearing about them living in a snowy place in the winter felt like a fairy tale to me.

I gingerly backed out of the driveway onto the street. I shifted into first gear and jolted forward. Her house was only over on Hellam Street but I often treated it as an adventure. All the oak trees and weeping willows lining the streets made me think of haunted forests lined with fog and chock full of ghosts.

I never shifted out of first gear as I hesitated at Wainwright Street and then continued to the other end of Monroe Street. I contemplated turning the corner when I caught a glimpse of the house there at the corner of Hellam, two blocks down from our house, where three people congregated in the driveway. I only knew that house had been vacant since I was four.

Mark joked the house was small enough to be considered a garden shed but the builders misread the measurements on the original design. To me, it resembled a child's drawing: the triangular black roof topped the plain eggshell white stucco walls, like a house of cards. The rotting front door crumbled and partially collapsed at the hinges, but someone had tried to salvage it with bright orange rubber cement. We had a green yard with lush grass and healthy fruit trees, and the other houses on the block had bright green lawns with squat shrubs and either weeping willows or oak trees, but this yard only consisted of a rectangular patch of pale dirt and a few dead blades of grass near the fence lining the right side of the yard and along the walkway leading to the front door.

One of the people, a woman in a dark red Realtor jacket stood next to my Latin teacher Mr. Crowe, who waved at me with a smile as I drove by. I was going to have him again for my third level Latin class. I returned the favor before noticing the “for sale” sign with a “sold” sticker behind him.

A strange tingling sensation emerged in the pit of my stomach at the sight of that sticker. I had a bad feeling about this house.

I pressed on down the street to Fiona's house, where Mrs. Grey, Fiona herself, and Billy were all awake and eating breakfast. He kept his head down on the table the whole time from fatigue. He and Fiona did not look related: she and Mrs. Grey both had short flaming red hair, calm gray eyes, creamy white skin, and small frames, whereas Billy had curly molasses colored hair, big soft brown eyes, pale, almost ghostly, skin, stood quite tall with a slight childhood tummy, like a big teddy bear; he often felt exhausted and he could scarcely keep his eyes open at times.

He graduated two years before and took the following year off because of excruciating pain in his joints. He begged his counselors for a sabbatical, but he also vowed to graduate. But he paid no attention to his teachers and as a result, his marks fell off a cliff because of the pain. He stayed in bed every other day from the pain. A month before school let out last year, Mrs. Grey drove Billy to Dr. Dutch's office after he complained the pain emanated from his bones. He diagnosed Billy with fibromyalgia, a condition nearly unknown to the world and among one of the first men to have it.

Sometimes his body ached too much to hug Fiona. It was because of his condition I decided to go into nursing school. I wanted to find out the source of his pain and find a cure while enforcing art therapy for patients. I was positive my Aunt Indigo had a cure, but I wanted to study this condition and other ailments more, and so I vowed to put down my horns for this difficult junior year.

I had devoted most of my attention to AP English so far, given I read _The Scarlet Letter_ over the summer and then wrote a five hundred word essay based about the book due three weeks before the first day of school at the classroom. I hoped, if Mrs. Rocissano was still teaching by the time I had children, technology will have advanced to where they can write essays and print them out with ease. Our old typewriter made odd, clicking noises by the time I began the last paragraph and the keys felt hot by the last sentence. Dad and I sprinted to her classroom to drop off the paper in a black peechee folder before the clock struck five o'clock in the afternoon, right on the due date.

After I returned home from Fiona and Billy's house that morning with those four peaches, Mom informed me Aunt Indigo was publishing a book and she signed a deal with the library up in Portland to present the first one hundred copies. She was flying down to Monterey Airport and meeting us for lunch in Seaside the next day out of celebration. Dad said she had been working on writing this book, titled _New Age Alchemy_ , for four years: it was a compilation of all her notes and data about plants and animals in journals and notebooks, since we dropped the bombs on Japan, and decided to work on this book, deemed her opus, the year after the meltdown of the power plant in Chernobyl; of course, she had written books and travelled in between.

Sometimes Aunt Indigo shared her notes with us or sent one of us a concoction, calling us “her guinea pigs” all the while. Before I started high school, I had stubborn itchy red blemishes on my skin, so Dad called her up for a remedy. Within a few days, she sent me a small silver box with “Aunt Anesthesia” written on the lid in bold black cursive lettering. She put a small white phial filled with light lavender cream inside grouped with a square white sponge the size of a peach pit and a note stating the lotion contained geranium oil and the essence of a basil leaf to clean, clear, and cure my skin. She advised me to put it on every night before bed. I had clear skin for the first day of freshman year.

That next day, on the way to the restaurant, we decided to stop by the school for my schedule. Prior to leaving, Dad put on his black leather driving gloves and slid into the driver's seat. Mom and I both were short, with shoulder length blonde hair, and brilliant blue eyes; he had wavy hair that was more red than brown which he often styled up in a spiky rooster tail above his forehead. He towered over both of us with a strong, bold smile accompanied by what he called “Patterson eyes”, striking hazel eyes I recognized anywhere. Dad always nicely dressed no matter the occasion: this morning he wore a soft black velvet coat, matching trousers, and matching button up shirt underneath a vest decorated with red suede roses.

Mom climbed into the front passenger seat next to him.

“To the school—” he announced, “—then meet up with Aunt Indigo.”

We lived about five blocks from school so I either walked or took the truck. It was better than the trip to the middle school, when I rode the bus, the only enjoyable part of the time. But even riding the bus at times felt perilous, especially in seventh grade when I had English at the end of the day with a teacher who made it clear she released us regardless of the time on the clock. In sixth grade, I had gym class at the end of the day and I often rushed to change back into my clothes or risk walking home.

We eased into the parking lot in front of the front office. I climbed out of the car and ambled towards the glass front door. Mrs. Dutch, the silver haired bespectacled secretary and Dr. Dutch's wife, sat in a chair away from the front desk to speak on the phone.

“—yes—yes, that's correct—” She watched me walk in. “—hi, Miss Patterson, I'll be with you in a minute—yes! Absolutely—there's something that talks about that—let me see if I can find it—” She rolled back forward to search through a stack of papers on the desk.

“—here it is. A pupil may be withdrawn from school if he or she is suffering from a medical condition and has a doctor's note, and—what's that?” She blankly stared at me.

“Oh, yes. If a psychiatrist says Patrick is psychologically unfit, then he can be pulled out of school. But it's just by the requirement of the school we see a note from the psychiatrist. Okay! Thank you for calling, Mrs. Ravens. Bye bye—”

She placed the receiver back down before adjusting her purple horn rimmed glasses and turning her attention to me.

“Ah, Miss Rowena Patterson,” she greeted me with a smile, “here for your schedule and location of your locker?”

“Yes, ma'am,” I promptly replied. Mrs. Dutch pushed herself back to the big gray file cabinet behind her. She opened the third drawer down and flicked through the student files. She unsheathed a hot pink rectangle of parchment and handed it to me.

“Rowena Elizabeth Henrietta Patterson—oh, my, looks like a good one this year,” she informed me, briefly glancing down at the parchment. I showed her a shy smile.

“I want to be a double major when I go to college. Nursing and fine art.”

“Oh, yeah! That's right! Is it you with the brother whom Emmett diagnosed with chronic nerve pain?”

“That's my friend Fiona. But Billy has days where he can't hardly take hugs from people. I'd love to help him and the helpless.”

“I have faith in you, Miss Patterson. I'm sure you'll uncover a cure for whatever ails that poor young man.” She flashed me a wink as she handed me the parchment.

“Thank you, Mrs. Dutch.”

“You're very welcome, Miss Patterson. We'll see you Monday—” The phone rang again. I returned out the glass door just as she responded with: “Monterey High School, this is Jeannine Dutch at the front desk speaking—”

I glanced down at the bright pink piece of parchment.

I knew I had David Crowe for Latin at seventh period. I had AP English and AP US history for first and second periods respectively, the former with Rochelle Rocissano, the latter with Jacqueline Leaf. Billy and Mark both said Mrs. Rocissano, or Rocco as everyone knew her, was unpredictable, in that she would assign an essay due in a week and neglect to ask the class for their papers that day. I had Ronnie White for second year French class following history, then third level studio art class with the amazing Joanne Black, intermediate algebra with Gale Martin, and lastly, AP biology with Lucinda Knight. Billy and Mark warned me twice about Miss Knight, who was far more unpredictable than Mrs. Rocco in that she neglected to say what to study and often blindsided students with labs. But I needed AP biology to prepare for nursing school.

All my advanced placement classes took place on Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday, my art and algebra classes on Tuesday and Thursday; art on Friday, and then French and Latin both on Thursday and Friday, thus leaving Wednesday free, but I was going to be at school for eight hours on Tuesday and Thursday. On Mondays, I could go off campus and drive back home after Miss Leaf's class. I was assigned the locker at the end of the line by Miss White and Mr Crowe's classes.

I told Mom and Dad about my schedule as I strapped myself into the seat.

“Wow,” Dad remarked as he pulled up the parking brake. “Sounds like a good one this year, honey. Your mom and I were speaking and she decided while she's up in the Bay Area next week for her writer's conference, she'll shop around for a new typewriter because that other one is kaput.”

“We've had that thing for years anyway,” Mom pointed out as we rolled forward, “before we were married, if I'm not mistaken.”

“Yeah, Dad had that thing,” he added, “then he gave it to Christina, who gave it to Indigo when she said she wanted to write books, then she bought her own typewriter, and she gave it to me when you and I were dating.”

Dad was the youngest in his family, followed by Aunt Christina, who was five years older, and Aunt Indigo was the eldest, nearly ten years older than him. Mom often teased him for having two sisters, but then again she was the youngest behind my Aunt Christine and Uncle Daniel.

I watched a cluster of kids, three boys and four girls, walking together down the street on the way to the airport. I recognized them from seventh grade, how I constantly avoided them because the very thought of me was like throwing a piece of raw meat into a shark tank. They loved taunting me because I hardly had any body hair and at some angles I appeared to be without eyebrows and resembled a Kewpie doll. They called me “ghost girl” and treated me like an alien; that was my nickname until I entered high school. Too often those memories opened the floodgates and the little nurse in me wanted to leave these vile, disgusting wastes of flesh to waste.

I was aware of my way of life and I loved learning, but there were days in which I wanted to leave. Pack up my clothes, grab my purse, and my copies of _Blood Sugar Sex Magik_ and _Rumours_ , my picture of Keanu Reeves, and my avocados, and just leave everything behind and go someplace far away from here. Sometimes those thoughts frightened me, but words and actions cut through me more than anything. Sometimes a roll of gauze and antibiotics would not suffice for the wound on my spirit.

We soon arrived at the airport, where a tall woman stood at the curb with her right arm raised up.

“There she is—” Dad pointed out. I recognized the quaint smile on her face. I never saw Aunt Indigo that much: she always travelled, or Portland had everything. She stood tall and slender with milky white skin and those Patterson hazel eyes. She had a short bob of shockingly bright indigo hair, her namesake, still perfectly indigo despite turning sixty in two years: she had a piece of hair swept over her brow and wore a burnt orange bandana to accentuate it. She wore a black travel coat, matching corduroy trousers, and an indigo neckerchief tied around her neck.

Dad hopped out of the car to greet her. I followed to help with her luggage.

“Aunt Indigo!” I declared. She beamed at me.

“There's my girl,” she proclaimed, throwing her arms around me. Her eyes widened at the sight of my face. “My goodness, your skin's cleared up so much!” She set her hand against my face, the rings on all of her slender fingers felt cold; I remembered the massive fire opal on her pinky and the big black, purple, and blue galaxy on her index finger. “How was that cream I gave you?”

“Oh, wonderful. I started school with clear skin and smelling like basil leaf.”

Dad picked up her two indigo suede suitcases and gently placed them down on their sides before closing. The three of us then piled into the car and we drove up the road to Seaside and the cute little seafood restaurant overlooking the ocean.

All the while, Aunt Indigo shared a few photographs with me, in particular a Polaroid of Mount Hood she took from the plane: I was amazed by the sheer amount of pure snow blanketing every nook and cranny to where it resembled an elf's hat. She showed the photograph of her little one story coffee colored house on 42nd Street and her hunkering down on the front step holding a white mug in her hands, taken by her next door neighbor. Perched on either side of the railing above her head where two Easter cacti bearing bright red and pink flowers in full bloom.

We parked in the spot near the front door and filed inside the cozy restaurant, a warmly lit room with blue and white walls decorated with little seashells, ship wheels, sailboats, fish, and octopi and a fishing net that stretched across the ceiling. The waitress strode up to us with a warm smile on her face.

“Party of four?” she asked us.

“Yes, ma'am,” Dad proudly replied. We followed her to the booth tucked in the far corner and underneath a window peering out to the cold blue ocean topped with a building fog bank and little white puffy clouds dotting the sky. The soft blue seats sank beneath a dark wooden table and a stained glass lamp with little red and orange koi fish hung overhead. The thought of Billy and the unbearable pains in his body entered my mind right as I sat in between Aunt Indigo and Mom.

“Aunt Indigo,” I began as the waitress left to fetch us glasses of water. She raised her eyebrows in question. “One of my best friends, Fiona, has an older brother with fibromyalgia, wherein he experiences horrific pains all over his body. Sometimes it hurts so much he can't bear soft touch. Dr. Dutch hasn't a clue what's causing it. Is there a concoction or an elixir that can help with that?”

Aunt Indigo peered up at the ceiling for a brief moment.

“The only thing I can think of with that—” she began at a slow pace, “—because I only just heard of it recently, too—is something called 'Exaltation of Saturn.' It was created in China in about 500 B.C. to bring relief from pain. It resembles melted Provolone cheese but calms and enhances the immune system. It has a base of copper and lemon balm, and usually has members of the deadnettle family mixed in like the per usual mint leaf, basil, or rosemary or something savory like nutmeg to cut its aromatic flavor, so it'd make him healthy all things being equal as long as he doesn't overdose. When combined with certain foods like citrus or anything sour or sweet, it can make one rather zombie-like. In massive quantities, it can make one resistant to saliant solutions so they can retain water for prolonged periods of time. When we return to the house, I'll try to whip some up for him. I never go too far without my materials. What's his name, by the way?”

She reached into her coat pocket for an indigo glasses case, a blue and indigo pen with a hooked body, and a pad of paper. She took out her indigo cat eye framed glasses with little silver stars on the temples.

“William,” I duly replied, “but everyone knows him as Billy. Billy Grey.”

The waitress returned with glasses of water and we gave our orders right there. Mom and Dad both ordered the Atlantic salmon with saffron rice; Aunt Indigo the clam chowder with oyster crackers; and I asked for fish and chips. As soon as the waitress stepped away, she returned to me with her pen ready.

“And how old is he?”

“Billy will be twenty on February 4, so he's nineteen.”

“And how tall is he and how much does he weigh?”

“He's about six feet in height.”

“He's taller than you and me,” Mom pointed out with a wink.

“Then again who isn't?” I cracked. The four of us laughed. “And then I'm unsure of his weight. He's chubby—like he never trimmed down when he became a teenager.”

“He could stand to lose about twenty pounds,” Dad joined in. Aunt Indigo scribbled down notes; the big fire opal on her index finger glimmered in the warm light. At one point, she glanced up at the ceiling and hesitated. Her lips barely moved but no sound came out.

“I admire that pen, by the way,” I pointed at the hooked pen.

“This is my Scorpion Pen,” she explained, smiling a bit. “I bought it at this little shop over in Bakersfield. I gave one to you, remember, Matt?” Dad thought about it for a minute.

“That squid ink pen that came in the little silver case? Oh, yeah! I usually don't use it because it's so nice looking.” Aunt Indigo sneered and reached across the table to playfully slap him on the shoulder with the back of her hand. She counted on four fingers and continued to profusely write down notes.

Soon, the waitress returned with three plates of food and one little white ceramic bowl containing clam chowder on a metal platter. I did not hesitate to wolf down a few fries as soon as she set the plate in front of me. Aunt Indigo double checked her notes before slipping the notepad and the Scorpion Pen into her purse. She returned her reading glasses into the case before beginning on her chowder.

“So when do you start school again, Rowena?” she opened a package of oyster crackers.

“Monday. I have English for first period this year.”

“Oh, that's good. At least you're not taking Latin or math. It's so sudden on that part of your brain. What else are you taking?” She crumbled a few crackers into her chowder as I took my schedule out from my purse. She put her glasses back on as she began reading; I watched her eyes widen at one point.

“I'm going to tell you this right now,” she began, picking up her spoon once more, “I can tell you everything you need to know about advanced biology and algebra should the opportunity arise. As a matter of fact—” She glanced around to see if anyone paid attention. “—and the three of you heard this from me—if I ever get the opportunity to teach a class, especially a biology class, I wouldn't require a textbook. Everything the pupils need to know is up here.” She pointed at her temple before returning to me as I dipped a piece of fish into the little dish of white tartar sauce.

“During the labs, especially the ones dealing with polymers and things that overlap into chemistry, don't be alarmed but you will get burned, cut, nicked, maybe have some hair singed off your face and arms, smell some of the weirdest things ever, and you'll set things on fire, because that's nature of the beast. I don't think you'd have to worry but chemicals and Bunsen burners don't care how much hair you have, hence why I've always kept my hair short. Dissections might gross you out, but again, it's the nature of biology. But—” She thoughtfully stared at the schedule.

“—since it's a scholastic setting, I doubt you and your classmates with anything too biohazardous that'd put your health at risk. But returning to my original point—” She handed the schedule back to me. “—if you have a question, be it something stumping you, or if Lucinda wants you to elaborate, or if you all are going to talk about the medflies, remember: all the answers are up here.” She pointed at her temple again.

We returned to silence to eat our food until Mom asked Aunt Indigo about her writing process. I paid no attention as I gazed out the window to the blue gray ocean. I wondered about the ocean, in particular the bottom and if it was something to be drawn or painted. Sometimes I caught myself thinking about the Dead Sea and the artwork surrounding it.

I always loved odd things: my avocado tree being the pinnacle. Dad owned a book on the history of Vietnam which put on the first of three shelves in a space beneath his desk because he ran out of room on his bookshelves. One time I sneaked in there to peek inside the book out of curiosity. He grinned at me sitting on the floor with my back against the desk drawers and the book sprawled open on my lap.

Afterwards, the three of them contributed to the bill and left a tip for the waitress before we returned to the car. Thick silvery gray and black clouds blanketed across the sky and a cool breeze fluttered through my hair, sending a shiver down my spine. I climbed into the backseat next to Aunt Indigo and we drove back to the house.

I strode down the hallway to my room to hang up my purse and take off my shoes. I spotted a crumpled up receipt on the floor next to the desk chair. It was from one of the little shops on Cannery Row from a couple months back. I walked back into the kitchen to the black garbage pail under the countertop next to the refrigerator.

I lifted the lid to reveal the small pile of garbage forming at the bottom of the bag. I spotted a thick, sliced open manila envelope on the side of the pile. On one side, I made out the words “Sock it to Saturn” and “from Aunt Anesthesia” written in bold black ink. I raised an eyebrow as I recognized “Aunt Anesthesia”, but I felt it was nothing concerning me. I dropped the receipt and closed the lid.


	2. The Boy from Another World

I slept fitfully the night before the first day of school. At one point, I peered through the dim light at the time on my little desk clock as it read two o'clock in the morning. I let out a long low sigh and stared at the faint outline of Keanu's head in the darkness until the next thing I knew was Dad gently shaking me awake.

“First day of school, honey,” he whispered, “come on—there's a pot of coffee nearly ready for you.” I rubbed my eyes and groaned inside my throat as I peeled off the blankets. He disappeared into the hallway to give me privacy.

I stripped off my pajamas and scurried across the hallway to the bathroom for a quick shower. I washed every inch of my body with the soft smelling bar of soap and scrubbed my hair with the clean smelling shampoo before rinsing and switching off the faucet. I stepped out of the shower with the clean white towel from the nearby hook wrapped around me. I returned to my room to put on clean underwear and the ensemble I set aside: a plain white button up short sleeved top with little pearly white buttons, black tights with little solid black dots, a long velvety black skirt down to my knees, and lastly, little black shoes with two inch heels.

I bowed my head forward and shook my hair dry before standing back upright. I strode down the hallway, past our cozy living room with the TV turned to Charlie Rose; I only heard “—Bush seeking re-election—” as I ambled into the kitchen.

I sat down at the table just as Dad, dressed in a red velvet house coat, matching trousers, and a simple black V-neck shirt, placed a plate of eggs Benedict and a light cup of coffee in front of me. He leaned in to kiss me good morning.

“Good morning, my love,” he greeted me as we sat down together. He took a sip his cup of coffee and I took a bite of eggs.

“Mom called this morning and told me she's going to shop around for typewriters in San Jose at about one o'clock.”

“When does she come home?” I was so hungry and he cooked the eggs just right.

“Tomorrow afternoon, I think? I'll have to call her again. Aunt Indigo made it home safely, too.”

I nodded at that. “Oh, how were those peaches I picked the other day?”

“They were gorgeous. Like, perfect for a cobbler. We're teaching you well.”

He winked at me before he checked his silver pocket watch.

“Oh, you better get a move on, honey. You don't want to be late on the first day of school.”

I wolfed down those last few bites of eggs before I put my plate in the dishwasher. I quickly returned to my room for my courier bag decorated with black and white emperor penguins. The night before I had put my schedule in the front pocket because sometimes I lost direction on campus; I doubled back down the hallway to the front door with the bag over my shoulder. Dad stood in the doorway with my mug in hand.

“Don't forget your coffee, Rowena—” I took the mug and the keys from the bowl and kissed him good bye. I hustled to the truck, which was parked with the tailgate facing the garage door. Mom took the car up to the Bay, so Dad was going to be home all day. I unlocked the driver's side door and placed my bookbag on the seat next to me.

I backed out onto the street right as Dad waved from the living room window. I waved back before I shot down the street towards Hellam and that little house on the corner. I halted at the corner right as a man wrapped in a filthy white bathrobe stooped down to pick up the newspaper on the driveway.

His body jolted as he bent over, like an old marionette puppet. He stared at me as he stood back upright. Little stiff tufts of salt and pepper sprouted up from his otherwise bald head. He had enormous bloodshot eyes against a pallid, gaunt face: he chewed on his lower lip as he made eye contact with me. I shuddered as he slowly raised a hand at me. I waved back out of politeness, and then darted ahead to the end of Monroe, then left on Madison before meeting up with Herrmann, and eventually the fenced off blacktop beheld before the vast bright green football field.

The school was a series of old mission style two story buildings set back from the parking lot in front of the field. I took the spot next to the front office where I could see the low kelly green and yellow Monterey Cafe and edge of the vacant Building 6. I had to walk clear across the grass quad to both biology and art, but luckily I needn't go further to Harmon and Randall Gyms and the locker rooms. I only saw the edge of the ROTC building before it disappeared behind the bushes of the upper field. I had to climb out to see the elective classes and the Mathematics Hall and the library. I foresaw myself hustling to my three language classes in the halls past Monterey Cafe.

A black Ford Taurus parked next to me as I climbed out of the truck and picked up my courier bag and my coffee. I closed the door when I heard someone calling me.

“Rowena!” I glanced behind me as Mark climbed out of the car.

“Oh, hi, Mark!”

He resembled a mad scientist: tall and skinny with a swarthy complexion, messy frizzy black hair which stood on end, big teeth and glasses with thick black square frames, like pilot's goggles. He always wore a black trenchcoat. Today, Mark wore that trenchcoat over a black Beatles shirt, black velvet trousers, and dark gray high tops. He always looked as though he could electrocute someone, but he was the sweetest boy with the deepest love of wood and metalworking. I called him my adoptive big brother, the brother I never had.

“Could you hold my coffee for me please? I need to lock the doors.”

“Oh, sure—I gotta hustle, though—my class starts in about ten minutes—” He took the cup as I locked the door; he flung his arms around me with a smile.

“So who do you have first?” he began as we walked out of the parking lot.

“Mrs. Rocco. AP English.”

“Oh, fun. Well, remember what Bill and I said and stay on your toes. I have Harrison, way the hell over there—” he pointed towards Harmon Gym. “Remember last year when they were working on something next door to the English classes? It was a metalshop. I'm gonna be one of the first metalworkers to come from here.”

“That's fantastic! I have Miss Leaf for AP history, too, and then I have the rest of the day free save for AP bio. I have that sixth.”

“You and your advanced classes,” Mark teased as we stepped through the front gate onto the campus. “But keep an eye on Miss Knight… Let's see, shop takes up two periods and then I've trig and Latin. I have a break between fifth and sixth so we can have lunch and talk more if you'd like.”

“Of course! I'll see you later, Mark.”

“You, too, little Capricorn sister—” We parted ways after one last hug; he walked in long strides to the far corner of the campus. I continued on across the quad to Room 82, where the door stood wide open. I fetched up a sigh and stepped inside to see her at her desk in the far corner of the room, scribbling down something. She had a short bob of jet black hair with stray frizzy ringlets hanging from underneath her temples, pale washed out skin, a Roman nose, and enormous, penetrating dark eyes over a narrow face. She glanced up at me as I walked into the cozy classroom with a low ceiling, two black chalkboards—one of which had a column divided into five boxes—and a half dozen oak tables with brick red chairs.

“Do we sit anywhere?” My voice trembled.

“Yes,” she casually replied, her voice creeping over me like icy fingers. “Yes, you may.”

I flashed her nervous smile as I chose the seat closest to her desk and gently set down my bookbag next to my feet. Another girl walked into the room as I took a sip of my coffee. She had jet black hair tied in a braid behind her head, big brown eyes, and light brown skin, and wore a light purple sweater over a long plum colored dress. She sat down across from me and introduced herself as Serenity Fox, a homeschooled student originally from Montana with Blackfeet Native American grandparents. Mrs. Rocco took notice to us when I introduced myself.

“Ah, the infamous Patterson family. Your mother is quite a writer and your daddy put my son in prison. And my next door neighbor. Although he did prove my brother-in-law's innocence. Still infamous to my family, though.”

I swallowed at the sound of that. I turned back around and nervously shrugged at Serenity, who warmly smiled at me. I confessed I only knew my mother had Polish and Ukrainian blood on her side because of her maiden name Manzarek; I never learned the full story of my heritage.

“I'm sure you'll find out some day,” she assured me with a wink right as three more kids entered the class, followed by two more, including a sandy haired boy who took a seat across the table from me. “At some point in time will come a moment wherein we begin figure out who we really are.”

The boy across from me smiled, his brilliant blue eyes lighting up like the blue sky and pockmarked skin which crinkled and dimpled with his smile. He wore a light blue and white plaid button down shirt over a white Nirvana shirt. I asked him if he was new, too, and he duly replied he was Victor from Orange County. He asked Serenity and me about _The Scarlet Letter_ and I confessed I enjoyed Hawthorne's other works better like _The Minister's Black Veil_ and his short stories. They were in awe at my story of writing the essay on the old typewriter and then turning in the paper at the last minute.

“I just about made it by the skin of my teeth, too,” Victor joined in. “My brother and I were up in San Jose the week it was due—he's in the fifth period class. But I finished mine and when we were up there, I said 'Sully, we gotta get back home! I need to turn this thing when we get back to Monterey!' We got here at three on the due date. He and I were both breathing sighs of relief afterwards, like 'that was close.'” The bell rang and the entire room fell silent. There was only eleven of us. Mrs. Rocco took attendance first before stepping from behind her desk to the heavy wooden podium bearing a finished wooden plaque carved with the words ROCCO in typewriter style letters.

She asked us about ourselves, our life paths, and our summers. I never liked being on the spot but those dark eyes assured me, particularly when I declared I wanted to double major in nursing and studio art and she raised her eyebrows in surprise. At the end of the class, she told us our summer assignments would return graded within the next week. She assigned us _The Lonesome Dove_ for reading, a book I thought Mom had in her personal library.

I walked to Miss Leaf's class, Room 85, down the hall, a room with only one chalkboard but six rows of pale beige desks. She was an older, heavier Asian woman with hair that was more silver than black tied in a messy bun behind her head and wearing a blue and silver striped sundress. She nodded at me upon walking into the room.

“AP History?” she asked me in a light voice as a part of greeting. I nodded and she leaned forward to a laminated sheet of paper on the table in front of her. “And what's your name?”

“Rowena Patterson.”

“Patterson… oh! You're right here in front of me.” I planted myself down at the desk and rested my bookbag once more by my feet. Victor and Serenity followed, he took a seat to my left in the last row, where she sat two rows behind me to my right. Again, there was only eleven of us here. We all introduced ourselves but this time included a couple of random facts about ourselves: she introduced herself as Jacqueline Leaf, she had been teaching for twenty-two years, she came to Monterey in 1975, my birth year, and her parents were Japanese and Korean immigrants settled in Hawai'i after World War II, her home state. I talked about my parents and my crush on Keanu Reeves which brought a chuckle from everyone in the class, including Miss Leaf. Soon, she passed out syllabi for us to read over.

“Whenever it's convenient, you all can get your books at the library, the sooner the better,” she informed us. “Now, I understand readjusting to school after a long break, so there will be a light reading on the first chapter about Mesoamerica but I won't assign anything with it.” The bell rang again and I slipped the syllabus into my binder: I vowed to properly file it when I returned home. I decided to check out a history book and then play by ear until Mark got out of class. I finished off my cup of coffee as I stepped out of the classroom. I was about to turn the corner when someone called my name.

“Rowena!” Victor ran towards me, still beaming and with a black backpack slung over one shoulder.

“Oh, hi! What's up?”

“Are you getting your history book?”

“Yeah, I don't have class again until sixth. You wanna come with?”

“Sure. I don't have class until fifth.”

We walked side by side towards the library, past some students who congregated in the quad for their break. A few bright white sunrays poked through the thinning blanket of fog onto the campus.

“So you said your dad's an attorney?” Victor recalled as we strode towards the Mathematics Hall.

“Yeah. He's quite successful, too. Anyone who hears the name Matthew Patterson, they better pray he's with them because he'll win. Mrs. Rocco was giving me a hard time for that earlier, too. Before you walked in, she told me he put her son and her next door neighbor in prison but proved her brother-in-law's innocence.”

“What are you doing in Monterey? Why not go to a big city like Sacramento or San Francisco?”

“Monterey's always been home to us,” I explained as the glass doors of the library come in view. “My parents wanted to give me the comfortable life they never had growing up, either. My mom was born on October 1, 1938 and my dad on January 30, 1942, and they married in 1970, so they lived through turmoil and fear of entering a far more terrifying war.”

“Wow. When's your birthday?”

“January 3. I'll be seventeen.”

“I'll be seventeen in a couple of weeks,” he flashed a slight grin at me as we stepped inside the library, a large rectangular room with twelve bookshelves lined up perpendicular to the ivory back wall. In front of the shelves stood a circle of wooden tables, matching chairs, and two dark green couches, followed by the front desk and silvery gray file cabinets holding the card catalog. Mrs. Dutch leaned against the edge of the desk next to a large stack of red and blue history books with thick spines.

“Why, hello, Miss Patterson!” she warmly greeted me. She spotted the mug in my hand. “You know you're not supposed to have that in here, right?”

“It's empty, though,” I pointed out.

“I know, it's just—you know, it's school policy. No food or drink in the library. Empty mug aside, there's always an assumption it contains something. Absurd, I know.”

“Here, I can wait outside with it while you get your book and then we'll trade places,” Victor suggested. I was surprised.

“Oh, you're too kind!” I handed him the mug and he headed back out the door. Mrs. Dutch raised her eyebrows at his kindness before removing one book from the top of the stack and rounding the desk to check it out for me. She politely handed me the book; I thanked her as I headed back outside to meet up with Victor.

“Thank you again, Victor,” I told him as he handed me the mug, still beaming at me. For a second, I thought he winked at me before he entered the library. I walked towards the parking lot, before pausing for a moment on the stairs of Building 6 to tuck the history book into my courier bag next to my binder. I took out the key and continued the gate. A little black Miatta blasting Pearl Jam from the stereo parked on the other side of Mark's car. I recognized her black hair and big aviator sunglasses.

“Ashley!” I called out. She waved at me with a big smile on her face. She climbed out with her purse over her shoulder and her black porkpie hat on her head.

“I am a little afraid to ask what you are doing out here,” she confessed in her Americanized accent as she picked up a binder from the dashboard. Ashley's parents came to the United States from Trondheim, Norway, although one never assumed that from her jet black hair. They originally lived in Vallejo but moved to Monterey when they felt it to be too hot. Ashley, like Fiona and me, was obsessed with movies and music, except she focused more on the 1960s, so much to where she often dressed like an elegant hippie: today, she wore a long black lace skirt under a matching tunic. She locked the door and removed her sunglasses to reveal her deep, pool-like blue eyes.

“Putting my mug in a safe place,” I answered as I placed it in the passenger's seat. I closed the door and gave her a hug.

“How are you?” she greeted me.

“I'm well—I have a bear of a break until sixth and Mark's meeting me for lunch during fifth. I might just go home for a bit and come back at noon.”

“Oh, my. How's old Mark doing? I have not seen him since Fourth of July.”

“I saw him earlier but he had to hurry to class, though,” I explained as I adjusted the strap on my courier bag.

“I see. I only have five classes this year.” She held up all five fingers. I playfully slapped her shoulder and she chuckled.

“Although I think I have seventh period off, though. I think, anyways. So I'll meet up with you and Mark at some point?”

“Sure! I'll see you later, Ash—my big Aquarius sister—”

“You, too, Rowena—my little Capricorn sister—” We hugged one more time before she headed to the gate, leaving me alone in the parking lot. I loved my friends and they felt like my siblings. I sighed a happy sigh of relief as I reopened the truck door. I felt a light tap on my shoulder. I turned to see a tall boy behind me.

He had wavy black hair, neatly styled into a little pompadour over the crown of his narrow head. He had deep set, placid blue eyes, a thin wan face, and a slender, willowy body which shivered in the cool morning air. He wore a long black coat over a black button down shirt, matching trousers, and polished black shoes. He dragged a solid black backpack on wheels behind him.

“Excuse me,” he spoke in a near whisper. “I'm new. Is it possible you could show me around?”

I blinked a few times to regain my composure; he took me by surprise.

“Uh—yes! Of course! Let me lock my doors—”

“No hurries.” I set my courier bag on the floor beneath the steering wheel and locked the doors. I gently motioned for him to follow me. He showed me a small, gentle smile as we walked towards the gate.

“What's your name?”

“Patrick,” he answered, still in that soft voice. “Patrick Ravens.”

“I'm Rowena,” I slowed down for him to catch up to me. “Where'd you come from?”

“Van Nuys. I lived in Sacramento for a few years but I moved here just a week ago with my aunt and uncle. I got my schedule yesterday.” He took a bright yellow piece of paper out from his coat pocket and handed it to me. I took the schedule and rested a hand on his slender shoulder as he trembled in the wind. I guided him to the Monterey Cafe when something caught my eye.

I glanced at the massive blackish blue mark plastered on the back of his neck. The mark looked fresh as it spanned over the nape of his neck onto his shoulders. The heart of the mark was so pitch black with subcutaneous blood it resembled an ink blot. The sight of it made my skin itch.

“May I ask how you got that bruise on your neck?”

“Oh, I fell down the stairs,” he casually told me.

“You fell down the stairs? Good Lord, you must've banged your head! Come, let's get you to Nurse Basil—I don't like that—”

“No, no, it's okay,” he insisted in that soft voice.

“Patrick, a bruise that dark and close to the base of your head worries me. I'm not a nurse yet but I can tell you that part of your body is easily damaged. You could've ruptured a major artery or your spinal cord. I'll go with you.”

“That's—interesting because I don't have a class today until fifth,” he pointed out.

“Come with me—” I gently goaded him towards the front office. He shivered as I opened the door for him to the warm front office. Two aides sat at Mrs. Dutch's spot at the front desk: one, a redheaded heavy girl with a pair of wiry round glasses, peered up at us as we walked into the room.

“He,” I began, gesturing to Patrick, “has a truly awful bruise on the back of his neck. Is Nurse Basil in?” The aide hesitated.

“I—don't know,” she turned to the blonde haired aide in a blue sweater, “is Nurse Basil in office?”

“I don't think he even came in today,” she confessed. I frowned as she checked a piece of paper in front of her.

“Yeah, he doesn't come in for at least another hour. He's got a weird schedule this year. He clocks in then and he leaves at one thirty, so he's here for only three hours.” I was stunned. I turned to face Patrick. The sight of the bruise made my neck ache; I wanted to help him.

“Well—my only advice would be to take it easy,” I informed him. He slowly nodded his head.

“Let's see this bruise, though,” the redheaded aide suggested. Patrick gingerly turned around and straightened his back. They both gasped in horror.

“Oh, my God! That looks horrible!” the redheaded aide exclaimed, clasping her hands to her mouth.

“What'd you do?” the blonde aide was mortified.

“I fell down the stairs,” Patrick never raised his voice as he turned back around with a shrug.

“Yeah, definitely take it easy,” the redhead echoed my advice.

“Come with me,” I coaxed him again, “I'll show you around. Thank you, ladies!”

We headed back outside as the sun dipped back behind the clouds and the breeze picked up, which made me shiver. I wanted to go home for a light sweater but I wanted to show the boy from another world around the campus.

“Okay. So what classes have you today?” We stopped in front of Building 6 so I could scan the bright yellow piece of paper. He had Mrs. Rocco's regular English class, Miss Leaf's regular US history class, pre-calculus, and he was going to partake in the creation of our yearbook. I noticed we shared three classes.

“We have biology together,” I reiterated, “and also French and Latin. Mrs. Rocco's class is right over there—” I pointed to Room 82. “—Miss Leaf's class is on the other side of the History Hall. You have yearbook fifth? I've only been in that classroom only once but Room 83? Oh, I know exactly where that is. Come with me—”

We walked together across the quad towards the English Hall. His trembling began to bother me.

“It's alright. We're almost there. I hope that bruise isn't spinal damage.” We rounded the corner of the English Hall and the door to the dark Room 83 closed from the incoming fog.

“So—here?”

“Yeah. Let's see your schedule again—you have US History in about ten minutes. It's right down there—” We doubled back to the space between the two buildings. “I have the next couple of hours free and I was going to go home for a bit to put on a sweater. I'm meeting my friend Mark for lunch during fifth later on. Since we have bio together, how does meeting up in the quad and walking to class together sound?”

“That sounds like a plan,” he agreed with a small smile.

“Okay then! I'll see you in a couple hours, Patrick.” He ambled down to Miss Leaf's class and I continued towards the truck.


	3. The Back Window

Dad told me the weather forecast on TV called for rain so I slipped on my black hooded raincoat and changed into my high heeled boots before returning to school. Rain sprinkled onto the windshield as I parked in the same spot as before. I tugged the hood over my head before returning outside. The rain on the Coast ranged from light and misty to a heavy downpour, but I refused to take any chances as the rain lightly pattered on my hood on the way to the Monterey Cafe.

I stuffed the truck key in my left coat pocket and then held out a hand to push open the front doors. I stepped inside the brightly lit cafeteria with high white walls and two dozen gray tables scattered over a bright linoleum floor. Mark hovered over the buffet with a plate in hand about the five people ahead.

“Mark!” I called out. He lifted his head and his face lit up as he recognized me. He mouthed “I'll wait for you” and pointed at the cash register.

I remembered Patrick and that massive dark bruise on the back of his neck. I pictured him falling down a flight of stairs, banging his neck and head on a hard solid. But he seemed too articulate and too aware, so it made no sense to me. I felt too hungry to ruminate about it.

I watched Mark grab a cupcake from the end of the buffet line before paying the dollar for lunch. I checked to assure I had four quarters in my little black coin purse in my purse. I filled up my plate with mashed potatoes, gravy, chicken, and topped it off with one of the last cupcakes. I paid the cashier the four quarters and Mark and I walked towards the table in the middle of the room, away from the front doors.

While we ate our lunch, I told him about Patrick. He was in shock when I described the bruise.

“He won't say what caused it, either,” I told him after swallowing down a bite of potatoes. “He said he fell down the stairs.”

“Bloody hell. Is he okay otherwise?”

“I guess. He was violently shuddering, though, I think from the cold. When I showed it to the aides in the office, they were just as appalled. I wanted to show it to Nurse Basil but he wasn't in yet. They said his schedule is incredibly odd this year.”

“Hope he didn't suffer from brain damage. Patrick, I mean.”

“I hope so, too. He's friendly and soft spoken. I promised to meet him after we eat because we have bio together. I can introduce you if you'd like.”

“Oh, sure!” Mark took another bite of chicken. The rain began to patter even harder onto the roof, like a thousand little horses galloping all at once over a cold sea of metal.

“Hope he brought an umbrella,” he pointed out.

“I hope so, too.” I took another bite of mashed potatoes, one of my favorite things to eat on a cold rainy day. “So how has your first day of senior year faired?”

“It's been amazing,” he told me, his eyes twinkling. “I already love metalshop.”

“I figured just as much. What do you have next?”  
“Next? I go home. Tomorrow I have shop again, then trig, then Latin with you, Fi, and Ash.”

“I have English and history again, then algebra, art, and then bio at the end of the day. Thursday is exactly the same except I have French and Latin then. I'm going to be here all day Tuesday and Thursday.”

“Jeez! You got this, though,” he reached over and high fived me. We both cleaned our plates and put them at the far side of the buffet for cleaning. We returned to the cold rainy afternoon; I tugged the hood over my head when I spotted Patrick underneath the awning, away from the rain.

“There he is!” I pointed out. “Patrick!”

He glimpsed at Mark and me, puzzled. His face softened as he recognized me.

“Oh, hi! I was wondering about you—” He violently shuddered from the cold.

“You should've come inside. Patrick, this is one of my best friends in the whole world, Mark Moore.”

They shook hands; Mark was taken aback, as if he had been shocked.

“Are you okay?” I was concerned.

“Is everything alright?” Patrick never raised his voice for a second.

“Good Lord, you're chilled to the bone!” Mark declared. “Let's go where it's warm. I don't have anything next so I can walk you guys to Miss Knight's class.”

I bowed my head as we crossed the quad towards the Science Hall. They both huddled close to me; Patrick's hair never mussied despite the rain falling in sheets. His entire body vibrated as we ascended the stone staircase to the science classrooms. Mark set his right arm around his shoulders as we reached Room 20, the first door on the landing. He craned his neck to peer into the brightly lit windows.

“Miss Knight's in there, but you've plenty of time to go in. Fifth isn't over yet.”

I opened the door and stepped inside the brightly lit room with eight slate gray tables with solid black tabletops. A row of four silver sinks and gray metal wash basins lined the wall to my left; a bright red fire extinguisher hung on a hook on the side of the cabinets near Patrick's ankle. Two big black chalkboards hung on the wall in front of us; Miss Knight stood over a sink at the front of the room, washing out a glass beaker.

She had auburn shoulder length ringlets with glints of gray lining a narrow square face; she stood at my height and was just as slender. She wore lemon yellow cat eye glasses, a magenta knit sweater, and black trousers. She glanced up at us and a quaint smile crept across her face.

“Mark Moore!” she warmly greeted him in a bold voice. “One of my top students. What brings you back here?”

“I'm just walking them here,” he explained with a slight smile. “Being a good friend to Rowena and all. I was going home but you know, it's cold and raining out there—” I yanked off my hood and ran a hand through my hair. Miss Knight tilted her head to the side.

“Rowena?”

“Yes. Rowena Patterson.”

“Patterson—” She placed the beaker next to the basin and opened a binder to her right. She lifted up a sheet of paper and hesitated. “AP bio, right?”

“Yes.”

“Ah, here you are! Rowena Patterson.” She glanced up at Patrick and pointed the pen at him. “And you are—?”

“Patrick.”

“Patrick—?”

“Ravens.”

“Ah, yes! We have two Patricks in this class year. Two Patrick—Ravens and Kirkpatrick—and a fellow named Vitantonio.”

“Eh, it's better than when I was here for regular biology,” Mark confessed. “We had three Marks. When Billy was here, there was a Marc with a 'C', another Billy, and an Ishmael. I don't remember what his last name was—he moved away a couple of years ago—but I remember Bill told me about this one kid introducing himself with 'call me Ishmael.' Anyways, I should probably go before it rains even more.” Mark lunged for the door. Before returning outside, he faced us once more.

“Try not to get burned so much, be careful with those older beakers, and don't set any old beakers on fire and if you do, name them after me.” He headed back outside with the door closing behind him. I returned to Miss Knight, who took out another sheet of paper from beneath the attendance sheet.

“Do we sit anywhere?” I inquiringly asked her.

“There is a seating chart—in fact—the two of you right sit there!” She pointed at the table closest to us. Patrick kept his backpack close to him as he sank down on the stool next to me. I lay my courier bag down on the tabletop. I sighed through my nose. I was here with Miss Knight, about to take a required class. I wondered how it would fair when Patrick spoke again.

“'Mortui vivos docent,'” he continued to speak in that soft tone of voice.

“What's that?” I raised an eyebrow.

“'Mortui vivos docent'—right there—” Patrick pointed at the middle of the wall in front of us, which bore a sign with that exact phrase in big black bold lettering.

“'The dead teach the living',” I translated, recalling my Latin lessons.

“Fascinating relic I took with me from Stanford,” Miss Knight excitedly remarked. “It was just laying on the floor outside the medical department and no one took claim to it so I took it with me.”

I gaped at her in awe as two more kids gingerly walked into the class with hoods on their heads. “You went to Stanford?”

“I did. Double major in pharmacology and bryology. Not biology, bryology. You speak Latin, I can tell… do you know what bryology is the study of?”

I thought about it as she told the two kids their seats. I knew the ending “ _-ology_ ”, or study of something, but I could not figure out the root word. I took a guess as they sat down at the tables next to us.

“Lichens.”

“Mmm, you're close. Mosses and also liverworts. I often stump people more often than not with that one.” She raised her eyebrows at me and tilted her head to the side as she turned to a third student. I glanced over at Patrick, who rose an eyebrow at that. I knew the word “ _muscus_ ” meant moss, but “ _bryo-_ ” was all Greek to me. I had never heard of liverworts, either. I felt it to be futile if I dared argue with her.

Miss Knight introduced herself as the eleven of us took our seats. I glazed over at the part about her accomplishments at and after Stanford; not one time did she turn it over to us. I finally took out a little black journal from the front pocket of my bookbag to practice my Latin phrases.

Last year, after a midterm, I wrote a poem in another little black journal out of boredom. It was a simple poem which I wrote for myself but at one point, the aide peeked over my shoulder and told my geometry teacher about it. He only read the line “bring exiles to justice, bring those who live to justice, and burn down those in charge”, which was enough to throw me out of school for four days without my journal. An aide to Principal Hatchett claimed it condoned too much violence, which my parents and I never believed for one second. Fiona and Ashley informed me of a rumor claiming the school officials burned the journal. Since then, I detested people glancing over my shoulder.

Miss Knight gave us an ungraded pop quiz to give us an idea of the class. I quickly slipped the journal back into my courier bag when she lay two sheets of paper in between Patrick and me. She tapped her nails on the surface of the table before moving to the other table next to us.

I took out a peacock blue pencil from the other front pocket. Out of the corner of my eye, I watched him lightly writing something on the edge of his paper. I reached for an eraser when he gently tapped my shoulder and pointed at the paper. I had to closely examine the words because of the glare from the ceiling lights. He wrote in painstakingly neat cursive: _I don't like her either. She irks me and I'm not saying that because she's rude to you._

I nodded my head and he erased the words so as to not leave a trace. I bowed my head and tried to answer as many of the twenty questions. I heard of arachnology and I remembered Aunt Indigo's notes on nitrogen fixation and acidity, but I had no clue about significant figures, or cell processes, and only somewhat about mathematical conversions and atomic structure.

I was among the last to finish. She coldly stared at me with her arms folded over her chest as I handed in the quiz at the front of the room. I returned to my seat right as she spoke up to go over the questions, which I found silly because we were going to learn this material. Had this been a real quiz, I would have miserably failed. Patrick shook his head the whole time, even at the end of class.

“Why were you shaking your head?” I curiously asked him.

“I got one right,” he confessed, the tone of his voice never changing, “and I guessed on it, too. It was the one about subatomic particles. Protons, neutrons, electrons, neutrinos, and their antimatter counterparts.”

The bell rang and I slung my courier bag over my shoulder on my way out the door. The rain calmed down to a light sprinkle, and left behind a damp chill in its wake. Patrick followed close behind me down the stairs. I never thought I would feel this way about a teacher but Aunt Indigo would have a field day with that bitch.

I walked out the front gate with the key in hand all the way to the truck. I placed my courier bag on the passenger seat as I climbed behind the wheel. I shut the door and fetched up a sigh. Time to go home and curl up with my history book. My stomach began to ache; it must be getting close to that time again.

I eased out of the parking lot onto the drenched pavement and towards the corner of Madison and then onto Monroe. I spotted Patrick walking down the sidewalk with his head bowed. The bruise on the back of his neck was so dark, I saw it from the corner. I slowed down, and rolled down the window, and cold air flooded into the truck.

“Patrick!” I called out. He stopped and squinted at me.

“Patrick! Would you like a ride?” He showed me a shy smile.

“That's very kind of you, Rowena,” I barely heard him over the noise of the street, “but I live up here.” He pointed up the street.

“No, no—” I insisted. “You look cold. Get in.”

I picked my bag off the seat and slid it down between my ankles for him. He opened the passenger door and clicked the handle on his backpack to lift it off the ground. He placed the bag on the floor before climbing into the seat.

“I was going to put this in the bed but there was a lot of water back there,” he confessed.

“Yeah, we need a camper shell, badly. Where's your house, you said?”

“On Hellam.”

“Okay, just a couple of blocks up.”

“Yeah, I don't like Miss Knight, either. She irritates me and I don't like saying that.”

“My Aunt Indigo would have a field day with her. She would argue with her and then force her out and do better. She's passionate about her career and far more humble about it, too. She doesn't feel the need to hit people over the head with her accomplishments without letting them speak.”

“Is she a biologist?”

“Her trade is actually alchemy, transmutational medieval chemistry. But she's excelled in biochemistry, nuclear science, and astrobiology for decades, since World War II when she was twelve. She recently put out a book called _New Age Alchemy_ and it's her opus. It's a compilation of notes from the time the atomic bombs went off over Japan to the Chernobyl accident.”

“ _New Age Alchemy_ , you said? I'll have to find that.”

“My dad—her little brother—calls her the next Lise Meitner, mainly because she's always had this glimmer of wonder in her eye when it comes to science. She's had a deep, lifelong love of learning and finding the beauty in the natural world, even in dangerous situations like Chernobyl, outer space, or the core of the earth. She takes minute credit for what she does, but she doesn't mind. Ah! Here's Hellam. Where's your house?”

“Over there.” He gestured to the little stucco house on the corner, the one that looked empty, the one that gave me a bad feeling.

“That one?”

“Yeah.” I reluctantly turned to the curb and spotted a woman in a bright pink long sleeved dress on the driveway. She had bright blonde, almost white, hair tightly wound into thick curls piled all over her head and a narrow, pale face topped with big black sunglasses despite the incoming darkness. She showed me a thin lipped smile as Patrick opened the door and slid out of the seat. He rounded the hood of the truck to embrace her before he faced me again. I rolled down my window to speak to them.

“Thank you,” the woman told me in a low voice. “Thank you, very much—” She paused.

“Rowena,” I promptly replied.

“Rowena.” Through the shaded lenses, I could see the thoughtful expression in her eye. “May I ask where you live?”

“Just up the street. I couldn't bear seeing him walking alone.”

“You're a dear. Come, Patrick—”

I was about to roll up the window when I spotted a massive black bruise on the nape of her neck; it exactly duplicated the one on Patrick's neck. The sight of both bruises sent a chill up my spine. I rolled up the window and continued to my house.

I wondered if that bruise came from falling down the stairs. The house was a one story with just the front step. From what I could see, there was no basement. If it did, it probably had a few stairs. Neither of those felt enough to make that severe of contusions.

I climbed out of the truck with my bag over my shoulder. Big, fat droplets of rain fell on my head up to the front porch. I entered the house as Dad greeted me with a big smile on his face, still dressed in the red velvet house coat from this morning.

“There she is!” he embraced me. “How was the other part of your day?”

“All I'm going to say is Aunt Indigo would have a field day with Miss Knight.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, she's a total braggert. Oh! I met a new kid today. His name is Patrick, he's from Sacramento, and he lives just down the street from us in that white stucco house. The one that's been empty since I was four.”

“That place? Wow, I thought that house was condemned. What's he like?”

“He's very soft spoken and friendly. He had this bizarre bruise on the back of his neck. Big, black, and the whole time, he trembled like a leaf. I think the cold exacerbated it. I tried to goad him into seeing Nurse Basil but he was absent. I told Mark about it and he freaked out.” Dad raised in eyebrows in surprise.

“Was he feeling okay otherwise?”

“I think so.”

“We should invite them over for dinner,” Dad suggested. “It's just you and me again for one more night. Might as well.”

I nodded in agreement and headed down the hallway to change my clothes. I decided to walk to Patrick's house to invite him to dinner. I put my coat back on with the hood over my head despite the rain calming down again. My boots clomping on the sidewalk was the only noise on the otherwise quiet street.

A light breeze rustled the leaves of the trees lining the sides of the road. I peered both ways before crossing to the other block. I recognized the property from down the block from its lack of trees. I approached the driveway of the house and the unsettling feeling returned, gnawing away at the pit of my stomach. I stopped in the middle of the pavement at the sound of something falling on the floor inside the house.

I crept towards the crumbled, partially collapsed front door. A faint musty smell emanated from the porch. The paint on the door had stripped away except for a few stray small chips around the rusted doorknob. I heard a shout inside. I backed away from the porch onto the walkway. There was another shout followed by a low _thump_.

I peered at the left corner of the house. Careful not to make any noise, I ducked around the corner to the side of the house. The grass poked out in stray, dried out blades along the base of the fence lining black wet soil and a line of shallow puddles. I placed my right foot on the spot in front of me and stepped forward; I straddled down the side of the house towards the backyard, a barren patch of gravel sitting adjacent to a square of pale dirt.

I glimpsed to the right and a narrow beige windowsill jutting out from the wall, just high enough for me to peek into the house. Beyond that was a rusty doorknob.

I bowed my head as I sneaked to the windowsill. There was another shout. I lingered beneath the sill when a voice near the window said something. It sounded like Patrick. Another voice replied to him.

“Aunt Chris, I'm doing what I can!” was all I heard before the door slammed. “Come back in here! Aunt Chris! Come back!”

Taking advantage of the two inch heels on my boots, I gingerly peeked over the windowsill and stared into the room before me. The window itself was caked in dust and smudges but I managed to examine the room.

The dingy room had a yellow diamond shaped light on the ceiling and a closet without a door. The door to the room hung ajar so as to reveal the dark hallway. Patrick sat on the edge of a bare mattress with his back turned to me. He had removed his coat and his pants, so he only wore a shirt and his underwear. He was surrounded by an empty blank yellow white void. No pictures, no bookshelf, nothing. His backpack was nowhere to be seen.

“Aunt Chris, please come back in here—” Patrick called out in a broken voice.

“Patrick, you know that room is too small for me!” a woman's voice shouted from behind the door.

“Aunt Chris, you're in the hallway. That's smaller than this room. Will you please just come back in here?”

I crouched down as the door creaked open. There was silence, and then I peeked into the window again. The man from this morning entered the room and glared at Patrick. They were more focused upon each other than me so I lingered there, just above enough to see over the top of the sill.

“Get in the closet, boy,” the man ordered in a low growl.

“No,” he snapped. The man stooped down to reach for something: the bed blocked the view. He stood back upright with one of Patrick's shoes in his hand.

“Get—in—the—closet,” the man ordered through gritted teeth.

“No!”

“Just do it, Patrick!” she shrieked from the doorway, her sunglasses still on.

“Aunt Chris, no—” Patrick never finished because the man grabbed him by the hair and yanked him towards the closet. He raised his other hand with the shoe and came down on the massive bruise on the base of Patrick's neck. I glanced at Aunt Chris, who looked as though she was about to faint. She disappeared into the hallway.

“Christina! Get in here!” Christina? I watched her slowly enter the room without her sunglasses. I gazed into her eyes, enlarged at the sight of Patrick's beating. Through the smudges on the glass, I recognized bright hazel irises, those hazel irises I knew anywhere. I ducked down below the windowsill and around the side of the house. I darted down the front lawn and the driveway. The rain fell in large droplets once again as I sprinted towards the other corner. I had to tell Dad what I saw back there.


	4. The Black Journal

Dad turned as white as a sheet. He brought a hand to his mouth and sank down in the chair at the dining room table. Tears brimmed his eyes.

“Did you—Did you say anything?” his voice broke. I shook my head.

“I couldn't,” I grimly replied. “I could see it in his eyes, the way he hit Patrick, and the way he shouted at her. There was no way I could.”

He let out a loud sigh as the color in his face turned to ash gray. His chest heaved up and down.

“I'll call Mom,” he finally told me, “and Aunt Indigo. But I need time, though.”

I lunged forward embrace him. He bowed his head against my shoulder and held me close. I felt him brush away the tears before going into the living room. I headed to my room to try to read my history book. I left the door cracked open as I took off my boots and hung up my coat.

I took out my history book and climbed onto my bed, leaning against the headboard with the book on my knees. I took a whiff of that freshly printed page smell. I turned to the “M” section and skimmed over the page: I had always read the end of the book first ever since I learned to read.

The word “Monoliths” caught my eye. The names “Boyle, Jefferson”, “Carlsson, Marcus Daniel”, “Schleissman, Harrison Branwell”, and “Thompson, Kenneth” were written underneath; the page number said they were later in the book. I turned back to the table of contents to find oout they were in the chapter about the Reconstruction following the Civil War. I was curious about them as I turned to the first chapter.

I tried to focus but that image of that man hitting Patrick kept replaying over and over again as I came to a section about the Anasazi, the Mayans, the Inca, and the Aztec. I was fascinated by the Mayans, from their big calendar to their love of astronomy and agriculture.

I heard Dad speaking to Mom on the phone in the other room.

I pictured the Aztec god Quetzalcoatl, with his brightly colored feathers and his black jaguar face. The image of him I had in mind twisted into a vision of ferociously beating souls in the otherworld and eating them alive, the same way Patrick was beaten.

I lay the book on my lap and rubbed my eyes. I blinked several times before returning to Quetzalcoatl.

I pictured the sun radiating over the Aztec and their stubby houses in the lush green southern Mexican forests. The rays of the sun clumped together into the shape of quetzal feathers; he faced off his counterpart Mictlantecuhtli in a dance off between light and dark, East and West, life and death. Dad's words slurred together in the next room. The text on the page darkened and melted into ocean waves.

They washed over the ground beneath me and crashed into each other, changing colors all the while into different shades of blue, from bright to navy blue to indigo, then indigo into a deep violet into a plum color and then back to royal blue. All the colors swirled together into a vortex, a whirlpool, and then into a big black hole of pitch darkness.

“Rowena!” Dad called out. I opened my eyes: he hovered over me, his eyes bloodshot with tears.

“Yes?” I blinked once, twice, five times.

“I just got off the phone with Aunt Indigo,” he told me in a broken voice. “She's just—in shock. She and I agreed the best way to help Patrick and Aunt Christina is to get them away from—Alastair, is his name—lawfully. I'll take it up. I'll be fighting for my sister and I'll see if a counselor will defend Patrick because he's not old enough yet. Indigo told me she called her a couple of years ago and she said life was good, but nothing about getting married and starting a family.”

“Patrick called her Aunt Chris,” I corrected him. He was taken aback.

“Oh, really?”

“Yeah.”

Dad gazed at my nightstand for a good long minute before he said anything else.

“So, Patrick must be—his nephew. Perhaps his parents are unfit or dead, so he went to his closest relative. What's his last name?”

“Ravens.”

“Ravens. Okay. I'll make some calls and search through papers. I'll also see if I can clear your name, too, because you were technically trespassing. Let's get some background on them.” Dad winked at me before leaving me alone with my textbook still opened on my lap. I stared out the window at the rain dripping off the gutter onto the windowsill and the sky, now turning royal blue for the incoming night. All I could do was read.

I brought a little red binder for history, a purple notebook for algebra, a black notebook for biology, and a bag of pencils to school the next day: I knew Miss Black had art supplies ready for us, but I decided to bring my good drawing pencils. I daren't tell Patrick about that evening. I regretted telling Dad about it. I went against my own word: I vowed not to peer over someone's shoulder and I broke that vow. I even drove past the house on the corner without stopping.

Victor remained cheerful all throughout English: he said he had no doubt he did well on his essay. I wasn't so sure about my paper. In history, Miss Leaf used a brand new, beige overhead projector and asked us questions about the reading, leading us into the lecture.

“Okay. So you read the chapter about the Anasazi and the Mayans, and—you didn't have to but it'd be wonderful if you did—the chapter about the Inca and the Aztec. Who here thinks what happened to the Anasazi?”

“Aliens,” Victor joked. The class erupted in laughter.

“Aliens! That's a first!” Miss Leaf admitted. Serenity raised her hand.

“Maybe they wanted to start somewhere else,” she suggested, “perhaps the Anasazi wanted a better life for themselves.”

Miss Leaf thoughtfully nodded as she wrote “the chance for a better life” on the overhead with a blue ink pen before turning to her left to give Serenity a participation point. I remembered Patrick and how Dad would help him taste freedom, and justice, and ultimately heal that ghastly contusion on his neck.

“Maybe they grew weary of where they lived,” I added, “like maybe they suffered a crisis and they took a good long look at themselves and said 'we should go somewhere else and start fresh. Forget we were ever here.'”

“Fascinating,” she breathed as she wrote “starting all over again with a brand new name” on the overhead and then gave me a participation point. “Seriously, I've never heard that one before. That's very profound, Rowena.”

I shrugged as I felt my face grow warm. Victor flashed me a thumbs up. At the end of the lecture, she assigned us the chapter about the Inca and the Aztec. Victor caught up with me as I walked to my locker.

“Hey, Rowena! What do you have next?”

“Next? I have a break,” I told him as we strode to the kelly green lockers. “And then I have art, algebra, and biology.”

“Oh? What level art?”

“Three.” I held up three fingers as I spotted that one locker across from Mr. Crowe's class. I took out my schedule for the combination to the lock: three to the right, eleven to the left, and then seven back to the right. I opened the barren locker to store the little red binder for the time being: I thought of decorating the inside with stickers or photographs at some point as I closed the door. Victor still beamed at me.

“I have Spanish next,” he retorted, “Spanish three. I mean, _tres_.” He held up three fingers as well.

“Which means you better get a move on,” I encouraged him.

“Do you have seventh today?”

“No, after bio, I go back home. Why, you want to study afterwards?”

“Nah, I want to introduce you to my brother. Yesterday, I told him about you.”

“I could still meet him afterwards. You know, we could meet up after bio.”

“Oh, cool! How 'bout in front of the library?”

“Sounds good by me,” I confirmed.

“Alright, I'll catch you then—” He disappeared into the Spanish classroom across the hall. I walked to art class; I peered over at the lingering fog bank over the coastline. I hunkered down inside my coat before I reached the protected corridor. I sneered up at the door of Miss Knight's class. I leaned against the wall and swung my courier bag around so as to bring out my journal and resume my Latin writing from yesterday.

I held my journal in hand and stared out onto the grassy area in front of me. The image of Miss Knight on an autopsy table burst into mind. I closed my eyes to better see the color of her skin, washed out to a frosty deathly gray. Someone had sewn her eyes and mouth shut. The rest of AP biology surrounded the table in black lab coats, bright blue latex gloves, and hairnets.

“Nurse Patterson, give the patient anesthesia—” a voice behind me announced over an intercom speaker.

“Anesthesia?” I asked, confused. “You mean, she's not dead?”

“Not yet, anyways,” the voice replied.

“But shouldn't that be the job of the anesthesiologist?”

“You're the only anesthesiologist as far as we can see.”

Everyone put bright blue rubber masks over their mouths and noses. I suddenly had a heavy glass gas mask in my right hand. I took a step towards Miss Knight, who, as far as I could see, was dead. But I set the gas mask over her mouth and nose and squeaked on the gas valve. Her eyes fluttered open, thus breaking the threads: the whites had turned fiery orange. She peered at me with just her eyes.

“Ghost girl,” her voice was muffled by the threads sealing her lips.

“Come again?” I raised an eyebrow.

“Ghost girl!” she insisted. “Rowena Patterson!”

I opened my eyes to see her staring hard at me. I fell into a daydream, still outside the art classroom. Today, she wore a bright pink sweater over a light pink button down shirt and matching trousers and bright pink shoes. Her clothes washed out her complexion so she looked as though she came straight from the autopsy table.

“Fall asleep standing up?” she smirked; her breath reeked of eggs, potato, and salad dressing.

“No…” I reluctantly answered. She noticed the journal in my hands.

“What's the journal for?”

“Just Latin phrases,” I continued, pressing the journal to my chest. “I love writing.”

“Oh, I see. I know about you, Miss Patterson,” she lowered her voice to a menacing tone. “I heard about the journal from last year, how a senior watched you writing, and the cat got out of the bag, and it ended up in a bonfire up the Santa Lucias. Don't think I won't find out your true intentions.”

“What are you talking about?” I was confused. “That was just a poem I was writing and that T.A. overreacted.”

“Uh-huh, and I bet you like to think of yourself as a romantic.”

“Not really, no.”

She squinted her eyes at me. “I will figure you out some day, Miss Patterson, or—ghost girl, I should say.”

I knitted my eyebrows together as she stalked away. I wondered who told her about that old nickname and that journal as I waved my hand in front of my face to rid the smell of her breath from my nose.

A short boy with fuzzy black hair wrapped in a navy blue windbreaker descended the stairs and scurried towards me.

“Rowena?” he greeted me in a scratchy voice.

“Yes?”

“Did Miss Knight corner you, too?”

“More or less. She couldn't close her mouth if it killed her, though.” He chuckled at that.

“I'm Vitantonio Villa,” he introduced himself, “I sit two tables over from you. I was absent yesterday so I had to meet up with her. She tried to get some dirt on you when I only know of you and your nickname 'ghost girl'. I guess she wants to know things about you, like… desparately. Forgive me—I was in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

“Not your fault,” I assured him. “Please tell me I'm not alone in thinking pink is a terrible color for her.”

“Yeah! I was wondering that myself, like 'jeez, take it easy on the pink!'” He glanced at the classroom door behind me. “What's this here? I moved here last year from Santa Clarita and I'm still getting used to this campus.”

“Studio art three. I'm just out here because all my friends have schedule conflicts and I like art.”

“I see. I have this next, too—maybe—” He took out his schedule from his pocket. “I do! We can sit together if you'd like.”

The class door swung open and Miss Black stepped outside. She was a short, squat older woman with salt and pepper flyaway hair, green eyes which often twinkled, and wore a lot of crushed velvet, lacy dresses, and knit sweaters. Last year, I nicknamed her “the Good Witch of the North.”  
“I though I recognized that voice,” she warmly greeted me.

“It's the Good Witch of the North!” I declared. She motioned for us to come inside the vast, brightly lit but cold room with a solid stone floor dotted with a dozen metal tables. Her desk stood on the far side of the room, covered in papers, pairs of scissors, a half dozen cups filled with pencils and pens, and a brand new paint palette.

“Rowena, may I ask you a favor?” she kindly asked me as Vitantonio and I took our seats at the table closest to her desk. “You have the hands of a brain surgeon—” She picked up a black bone china coffee mug and the handle from next to the palette. “This has been heating up already—” She gestured to a black and silver glue gun with a brand new stick of translucent yellow tinted glue in front of her. “—could you glue the handle of this mug back on?”

I gladly took the offer and dotted a bit of the yellow glue, which resembled to melted cheese, onto the breaks of the handle. I then pressed on the handle as I set down the mug. Miss Black gently patted me on the shoulder.

I had missed taking art class, learning how to coax a drawing or a painting out of the paper or the canvas, bring the figure out of the clay, make something out of a blank space. I saw pencils, paintbrushes, sculpting tools, even typewriters and those cubic word processors, anything that required the right side of the brain as the arrows, and the blank space the target. I hoped, when I became a nurse, I uncovered a correlation between the spark of creativity and the wiring of the right hemisphere of the brain.

I wanted to stay in art class for the rest of the day. The only light at the end of the AP biology tunnel was passing the exam in May. Miss Knight could leave me at the bottom of the barrel in the grade book but I needed to pass the exam.

As I walked from Mrs. Martin's class to biology, I reimagined her on the autopsy table. Her eyes were still wide open despite the gas mask covering her nose and mouth.

“Lay still, Lucy—” the voice on the intercom insisted. Mark appeared in front of me with a scalpel in his gloved hand.

“Rowena, you're head surgeon,” he flatly told me, “make the first incision.” My hands trembling, I took the scalpel. I hung over Miss Knight's pale body, which writhed and twisted in a futile attempt to escape.

“Restrain her, please—” Mark called out to the intercom. There was a brief silence, then Miss Knight's body stretched taut against the table. Her veins and arteries emerged from underneath her withered crumpled skin all over her naked body. I was about to make an incision with a metal scalpel without any iodine on a live body on a table full of electrical current.

I pushed the blade into the dehydrated, fragile skin above her sternum. She screamed bloody murder into the gas mask as I dragged the scalpel down the middle of her chest and towards her sunken abdominal area. I closed my eyes as a stream of thinned pink blood welled up from the middle of her chest. I pushed the blade of the scalpel even deeper. More blood sprayed out like fountains from the incision.

“GHOST GIRL!” she shouted at the top of her lungs.

I blinked and found myself in the biology classroom. Miss Knight stood at the front with her arms folded over her chest, glaring at me. Those eyes penetrated deep into me, grinding right into my soul. I pictured the scalpel again; I stabbed it into her eye, without iodine and without anesthesia. Before I sat down at the table, she cleared her throat. I quizzically glanced at her.

“Yes?” my voice startled her.

“Nothing. Just clearing my throat. Although you do have a note here—” She picked up a little pink note off the table in front of her and held it out with a little thin lipped smile. I took it from her without thanking her. The note said to go to Principal Hatchett's office whenever convenient. I was going to be late meeting Victor and his brother but whatever she wanted, I needed to do it.

After class, I walked to the front office with my head bowed. I fetched up a sigh as I stepped inside at Mrs. Dutch typing something on the brass typewriter on the desk.

“Hello, Miss Patterson,” she greeted me. “What can I do for you?” I showed her the note.

“Principal Hatchett wanted to see me?” She nibbled on her bottom lip before remembering.

“Ah, yes!” She picked up the receiver of the telephone there on the desk and pushed a button. She paused.

“Olivia? Yes, Rowena Patterson is here to see you—yes—yes, she's standing right in front of me. Okay, yes—” She hung up the phone and returned to me.

“She'll be out right—now.”

Principal Hatchett strode around the corner to my right. She was an older North Carolina woman who always looked frazzled: her gray and white flyaway hair held up in a messy bob over blue green eyes, and she always wore tweed pantsuits with button down shirts. I had seen her with make up probably twice.

“You wanted to see me?” My heart skipped a beat as she halted in front of me.

“Ah, yes,” she recalled in her prominent Southern drawl, “come with me—” I followed her down the warm hallway and into her office. There were two black and dark green chairs in front of her heavy oak desk, the front of edge of which had a little brass name sign bearing in engraved bold letters: **M. OLIVIA HATCHETT**. The opposite wall had a window peering out into the quad. I gasped at the other two people in there with grave expressions on their faces.

“Fiona! Ashley! What are you two doing here?”

“We were wondering that ourselves,” Fiona admitted as I stood in between them. Principal Hatchett shut the door before rounding the desk to her chair. She cleared her throat before speaking again.

“Now,” she began, folding her hands on the desktop, “earlier today, I got a tip off from a teacher—Lucinda Knight is her name—do you ladies know her?” My stomach twisted into a tight knot.

“My brother Billy had her when he was going here,” Fiona answered.

“I have her now,” I added in a low voice, “for AP bio.”

“Well, she told me, Mrs. Dutch, and a few other officials the three of you were supposedly plotting something against the school. Personally, I think it's untrue. You're all intelligent girls, you keep to yourselves, especially you, Miss Hansen—” Ashley showed her a nervous smile. “—but what I want to know is have either of you heard that?”

“No,” she duly replied.

“No,” Fiona echoed.

“No, but—” I started. Principal Hatchett quizzically raised her eyebrows at me. Fiona and Ashley peered up at me, concerned. The room fell eerily quiet except for the clicking sounds of Mrs. Dutch's typewriter in the other room. “—if she's referring to my black journal, then she's got the wrong idea.”

Principal Hatchett paused for a moment before slowly nodding her head.

“Oh, I remember that. The black journal,” she recalled, gesturing at me. “I remember sending you home and watching an official dispose of it, but that's it, though. I don't make the rules or oversee these things. I merely represent the school.”

“Well—” I started, “I'll say this right now, Principal Hatchett. It's not true. I have this journal—this right here—” I took out the new black journal from my courier bag, “—it's a new one that matches the other one—but I assure you it's safe and there was nothing in that old journal that posed a threat, either. It was just a diary, something I used for poetry which I write out of boredom. That T.A. who caught me took it out of context.”

“Yeah, and no one listened to her when she tried to defend herself,” Ashley chimed in, “Fiona and I defended her. But no one listened to us.”

“Especially Miss Knight,” I persisted. “I tried to tell her otherwise, but no.”

Principal Hatchett frowned, completely nonplussed. “Why would Miss Knight do that, though?”

“Paranoia, probably,” Fiona suddenly answered. “Heard it through the grapevine and took it as gospel.”

“But why?”

“Who knows,” I shrugged. Principal Hatchett eyed the journal in my hand when rays of the sun poked out from behind the clouds. Bright sunlight filtered the window onto my face.

“You said you have her this year?”

“Yes,” I replied.

“Don't be afraid to say something to her,” she encouraged me. “If she brings it up, say it's a lie. If she continues to believe it, try—it will be difficult because she is your teacher—but try to brush it off. Leave up that wall and hopefully, she'll take notice. I can only do so much, but it's in your power, though.” She winked at me.

“You ladies can go home and relax,” she casually told us with a smile and the three of us filed into the hallway.

“More power to you, Rowena,” Fiona told me with a sly grin as we returned to the front lobby. “Miss Knight couldn't stand Billy, either, because she thought his pain was just an excuse to get out of homework and she pinched him.”

“I think I've seen her before,” Ashley confessed, waving at Mrs. Dutch, “she looks like you, Fiona.”

“In about twenty years, give or take,” I corrected her as we headed out the door. The sun dipped back behind the clouds, which left the quad in shadow.

“Except her wardrobe's like—haphazard,” Fiona flatly chimed in. “And I mean haphazard. Bill says it's like she neglected to look in the mirror when she got up in the morning.”

“She wears these cat eye glasses that Fi would rock, though,” I joked. The three of us laughed, our laughter echoing off the outside walls of Building 6.

“Well, I have to run home,” Ashley informed us. “I have a mountain of homework on the second day of school!”

“Yeah, I need to leave, too,” Fiona added, adjusting the straps of her backpack. “Bill's really sick and we're taking him up to Santa Cruz. How 'bout you, Rowena?”

“I'm meeting up with my new friend Victor,” I promptly told them.

“Victor?” Ashley was interested.

“Yeah. It's platonic, though. He's in my English and history classes and he told me to meet him here. He wants to introduce me to his brother.” They devilishly glanced at each other.

“Rowena, you little vixen!” Fiona exclaimed, grinning. “First Keanu Reeves, now two more guys. Tell us more afterwards—” They hugged me before walking together to the parking lot, leaving me alone in the quad. The silence on campus after seventh period always sent chills up my spine. It was even more unsettling to hear a voice cut through the silence.

“Ah, there she is—” I turned around. Victor and another blond boy approached me with identical warm smiles; the other boy was wrapped up in a white sweater, white jeans, and big white Doc Martens.

“Rowena, this is my big brother, Sully.” He and I shook hands.

“It's good to meet you, Sully,” I politely told me.

“You, too, Rowena,” he remarked in a mild voice. “I've heard a lot about you, like Mr. Crowe calls you ' _tacet adiutor_ '. I've heard him call you that while I was coming into the next class last year.”

“Eh, he calls me that because I've always wanted to help people and go at it alone. _Ego sum tacet adiutor_.”

“What's that?” Victor pointed at the black journal in my hand.

“This is my journal,” I explained. “I write in Latin and poetry in here—” I was cut off by Sully's watch beeping. He gasped.

“Oh, jeez, I forgot,” he muttered aloud.

“Forgot what?”

“Oh, yeah. We've got to pick up our cousin at the airport,” Victor recalled. “He was flying from San Bernardino to Seattle and his flight was delayed from the clouds. He called Mrs. Dutch to say he'd be landing in Seaside and Sully set a timer.”

“Talk more later on?” Sully suggested.

“Of course,” I confirmed. They hugged me before wheeling around and disappearing around the corner of Building 6. I returned to the truck, slipping my journal back into my courier bag all the while. Tomorrow was a work day for me and hopefully Dad had something planned out.


	5. The White Comb

He told me I needed to provide proof, be it a photograph or an object, otherwise we had no case. I was a witness and Dad believed me but the court needed something to prove Alastair hit Patrick and his circumstances put him in danger to issue a warrant. Because I was a witness, the court granted me immunity so I could return to the house but there was possibility of trespassing charges.

I daren't tell them about Miss Knight. They had enough to deal with as it stood so I rather not talk about it. I took that Tuesday night off to hear about Mom's writer's conference. She only touched onto it because she was exhausted that night but she signed a two book deal with a small publisher up in San Francisco but they were going to pay her just over sixty thousand dollars.

“I think I'm going to go into fantasy land,” she proposed at breakfast, “like romance fantasy.”

“With an air of mystery?” I suggested as I took a sip of coffee.

She smiled with a glimmer in her eye. “Yes! That's a great idea! I also bought us two new typewriters. One for Dad and me and your very own. They didn't have any blue or purple ones but I got you a cherry red one. And yes, I still have _The Lonesome Dove_ in my library.” She gave the little red hot typewriter to me after breakfast and I excitedly took it to my room. I plugged it into the wall before I took a whiff of the brand new carriage. I was eager to start writing with _Blood Sugar Sex Magik_ and _Rumours_ in my ears.

I spent all day reading; first, a good portion of _The Lonesome Dove_ and then the chapter about the Mayans and the Aztec again. I needed rest before returning to the house. A part of me refused to see that man, moving like a wooden marionette hitting Patrick on a tender part of his body again. Aunt Christina had a bruise on her neck, which meant Alastair was hitting her, too.

That evening, I slipped my high heeled boots back on along with black denim jeans and a black hooded sweatshirt, thinking of a plan all the while. I ran my comb through my hair; at one point, I stared at the narrow plastic teeth. I pictured Alastair picking up one of Patrick's shoes to hit him and slipped the comb into my sweatshirt pocket and tugged the hood over my head.

I clicked off the lamp as I headed into the hallway. Dad stood by the front door with a small silver flashlight in hand. He pressed the button on the back and red light flooded out.

“This is bright enough to help find your way,” he explained, handing me the flashlight, “but it's dim enough so someone can't see where the light's coming from.”

Mom entered from the kitchen wrapped in her black bathrobe holding a cup of coffee in each hand. She handed one mug to him before throwing her arms around me.

“Best of luck, sweetheart,” she advised me in a low voice, “we'll be waiting for you.”

I stuffed the flashlight into my pocket next to my comb. I closed my eyes before heading out the front door into the chilly night and the porchlight bathing the front yard with pale yellow light. I strode down the driveway to the dark street. A single streetlamp stood on the corner a block ahead, washing the street in low orange light against the inky black sky. That was a checkpoint.

A light but cold breeze penetrated my sweatshirt as I scurried up to the corner. I stared back at the streetlamp, the last bit of light before I crossed into total darkness. I bowed my head and crossed to the corner in front of me. My eyes adjusted to the dim light so I could see the outlines of low hedges, the picket fences lining the neatly groomed front lawns, the border of the sidewalk, and eventually, their driveway.

I slowed down to silence the heels on my boots. Dark shadow blanketed the entire house, but I knew they were home from the dim orange light bleeding from the living room window; I needn't be caught for something as trivial as the heels on my boots.

Crossing the driveway, I ducked down to stay out of view. I glimpsed into the front window at Aunt Christina, my and Patrick's Aunt Christina, slouching in a spindly black chair with the left side of her body facing the window. The orange light glowed from behind her, casting just enough light so I could make out the vacant expression on her face and her glassy eyes.

I crept around the side of the house and reached into my pocket for the flashlight. I pressed the button which shone the red light onto the damp strip of dirt. I kept the light down low as I rounded the far corner to the backyard, now an enormous black hole. I crept to the windowsill, which beheld the back window, now pitch dark. I took the comb out from my pocket, and reached up to the sill, and silently put it there.

A light flicked on inside the room. I jerked my hand away and ducked back around the side of the house. I peered back at the comb laying on the sill. I waited around the corner with my heart hammering inside of my chest. Patrick said something. There was another bout of silence before Aunt Christina shouted, “Alastair, no!”

I clicked off the flashlight and opened my mouth to let out a silent cry. I heard a low _thump_ inside the house followed by Alastair growling. There was a loud grating noise to my right. Someone opened the window. I stood perfectly still. For a second, I believed I had become ghost girl. I left something behind and whoever opened the window found it as a yellow orange rectangle beamed down on border between the gravel and the dead grass.

“Whose comb is this?” I heard Patrick ask aloud. I closed my mouth.

“PATRICK! GET IN HERE!” Alastair shouted in a hoarse voice.

“Whose comb is this?” Patrick repeated. “I mean—” I heard another _thump_ and Aunt Christina groaning.

“Alastair—! That hurts! ALASTAIR, THAT HURTS! Patrick, gimme that!”

I clasped my hands to my mouth. The window was wide open so I heard everything. Patrick grunted. Alastair let out a painful shriek as she did… something. I heard a few more _thumps_ before she spoke again.

“Patrick, come on—” she insisted, grunting. “I'm bleeding—you're going to have to drive—”

“Aunt Chris, you know I can't drive!” Patrick declared.

“DO IT ANYWAYS! I'M BLEEDING FROM MY HIP! DRIVE ME TO THE HOSPITAL!”

Alastair groaned. I remained still. I nibbled on my lower lip as the garage door ground open. There was a light _crick_ to my right: I peered over at the comb resting on the gravel followed by the window grinding shut. The fan belt of a car squealed out into the night. A little hatchback roared towards the corner. I recognized Patrick's silhouette at the wheel and Aunt Christina next to him in the passenger seat. They turned the corner and sped down Hellam with the fan belt screeching out. Alastair clicked off the light in the room.

I let out a long low sigh. I stayed there a bit longer until I knew the coast was clear. The porchlight clicked off and the property was engulfed in darkness. I waited another minute before I clicked on the flashlight and peeked around the corner. The white comb glared against the dull gravel. I crouched down to examine the huge wad of dark hair wound up in the teeth. I shuddered at the thought of Aunt Christina ripped out Alastair's hair as I picked up the comb from the other end. She also explicitly said she was bleeding from her hip.

I held out the comb as I returned to the pitch dark front yard. Everything was dark. I jogged onto the sidewalk and clicked off the flashlight the light from the streetlamp returned to view. I never glanced back as I dodged to the streetlamp on the corner. I stopped at the crosswalk to examine the wad of hair in a better light.

I crossed the street and stuffed the flashlight into my pocket. Soon, I recognized the peach tree in the front yard. I darted to our front step and noticed Dad at the table, sipping his coffee.

“There she is—” he called out to Mom. I yanked off the hood as she opened the front door. She gasped when she saw the comb in my other hand.

“Oh my God,” she blurted out, clasping a hand to her mouth.

“What is it?” Dad scrambled to the door, putting on his reading glasses. He gasped when I held up the comb in the better light.

“That better not be Christina's hair,” he stammered.

“It's not,” I assured him as Mom closed and locked the door. “This is my comb. I took it with me because I knew one of them was going to use it—” I handed the comb to Dad for examination. I told them everything I heard in the house and afterwards, Mom embraced and gently rocked me. I sniffled. He placed the comb on the table and embraced us.

“It's okay, honey,” he soothingly told me. “You did the right thing. I'll take this to the office while you're at school tomorrow and we'll file suit. That animal is beating Patrick, putting my big sister's life in danger, and now he's terrifying my little girl. I can assure you he will regret the day he messed with Big Daddy Patterson. He needs to be put away.”


	6. More Boys from Other Worlds

News spread throughout the Peninsula over the next couple of months, how Big Daddy Patterson was defending his sister in court. I heard countless rumors confident Dad had this in the bag, but I heard claims Aunt Christina needed asylum if Dad won. It felt odd hearing all of this speculation. Meanwhile, I had a handful of dreams about black holes: they warped my body and pulled it apart like a handful of spaghetti. I also often had no dream recall.

Two days after Halloween, Mr. Crowe asked me about the case at his desk and I told him I was forbidden from speaking about it to protect Aunt Christina and Patrick. He thoughtfully gazed at Patrick but never said anything. In fact, most people stayed silent about him. But Mr. Crowe applauded me for blowing the whistle and returned to calling me “tacet adiutor, the silent helper”, but I felt it undeserved. Patrick showed me a small smile when I returned to my seat. I wanted to talk about him.

Often during study halls, he whispered to me of his dislike of all this attention on our aunt. At one point in French class, I finally gathered enough curiosity to ask him “why are you whispering?”

“No one believes me,” he confessed. “I told Mrs. Rocco—who's my counselor—about the stress it's causing me but she told me she was swamped with grading papers. I went to see another counselor and she didn't believe me.”

I was at a loss for words. I merely encouraged him to try to focus on school work and I promised to be his counselor. I suggested going somewhere far away from all the gossip. At one point, I suggested why he never risked sneaking out of the house. He feared Alastair might track him down and drag him back by his fingernails. He feared the beatings would become more violent and spill over onto us if he came to our house.

The week prior to Thanksgiving, I suggested the two of us take a day trip to Morro Bay in Mom's truck. We could buy lunch together and take a walk on the beach to Morro Monolith. Surprisingly, Alastair and Aunt Christina allowed it and Patrick met up with me that Saturday in a dark sweater, black jeans, and big black knee high boots and his hair slicked back. He greeted me a soft spoken “hello—” as he climbed into passenger seat.

He stayed silent all the way down to Carmel by the Sea until I finally spoke up.

“So there's one thing we want to know—” I began. He thoughtfully gazed at me with those gentle blue eyes. “—and since we're alone now, I feel better asking. Why are you even living there?”

He cleared his throat. “He's my actual uncle,” he replied in a low voice. “My mother's brother. I lived in Van Nuys the first ten years of my life. My father is an unknown: my mother told me she had me out of wedlock and so she raised me alone. She had hypotension. I'm positive you know what that is.”

“Hypotension? Diametric opposite of hypertension, or high blood pressure. A weak heart.”

“Yeah. When I was eight, she said if she went before my eighteenth birthday to take the train to live with him in Sacramento.”

“And she—?”

“In her sleep. Her heart just stopped. Fifth grade just barely started—it happened around Thanksgiving. I was ten.”

“So you went up to Sacramento, a young child, all alone?”

“No, Uncle Al picked me up and took the train with me. He married Aunt Chris, too,” he grimly added, “a couple years ago in secret.”

“I'm surprised Aunt Christina never told us,” I confessed.

“I'm not,” he continued in that mild voice. “He doesn't let her use the phone. Or anything else. He always tells her the outside world will get suspicious. I'm going to be honest with you, Rowena—”

“What's that?”

“I almost refused your invitation. I was afraid, with all the rumors swirling about, that if I leave the house even with permission, he'll get violent towards her. And it will be a thousand times worse because I'm not there. But they convinced me that it'd be good for me to go because I told them I was with a friend.”

“Well,” I started, carefully selecting my words, “look at this as your first step towards independence. You don't want to live with us, but your coming with me to Morro Bay tells me you're willing to get away from there. How old are you, by the way? I never learned your age.”

“I'm fifteen.” I nearly slammed on the brakes.

“You're fifteen?!”

“Yes,” he never raised his voice. “I was born August 23. He refuses to let me drive aside from not being old enough.”

“I was born January 3. Okay, so almost five months after you. But still. Consider this a step for you, Patrick. What was your mother's name?”

“Isolabella. Not Isabella. She said Alastair was her only family. Their parents—my grandparents—underwent divorce after divorce so the two of them vowed to stick together.”

I nodded as we continued on down Highway 1. Maybe Isolabella's passing triggered Alastair's violence, but Patrick only knew so much. Behind that quiet voice and that calm demeanor stood an untapped realm waiting to be aired out. Aunt Christina was an unknown to me, too: the quiet middle child who never said much, compared to Dad and Aunt Indigo.

We wound past Big Sur where the rocky bluffs overlooked the churning gray ocean. He stayed quiet the whole way past Los Padres National Forest, staring out the window at the ocean and the foamy white breakers hitting the coast down below. The expression on his face was blank but soft, as if he was at peace. When the highest turrets of Hearst Castle peeked through the thin veils of clouds, he spoke up again.

“Rowena, I need to confess something.”

“Be my guest. I promised to be your counselor. You can tell me anything.”

“Remember the other day in bio and we were talking about anesthesia?”

“Yes. Yes, I do, mainly because Miss Knight was giving you a dirty look the whole time.”

“Anesthesia is medically induced numbness. Your aunt—our aunt, I should say—is the sister of one of your parents. For you, she's your father's sister, for me, she's the wife of my mother's brother. She either offers you something your parents can't give you or she can't. She's either one of your best friends or your worst nightmare.”

“I'm not following,” I confessed, “but keep going.”

“Aunt Chris is, at times, frightening to be around. Anesthesia numbs agony. For me, it's the agony of living. Despite five months between us and we're merely cousins, you feel like the aunt I never had. Forgive me, but when I'm with you, I feel safer. I forget I live there, even if it's just for one day.”

“So I'm like anesthesia to you.”

“Exactly.”

I flashed back on that manilla envelope in the garbage pail back home a couple of months ago, the one which had “Aunt Anesthesia” written on one side. Aunt Indigo referred to herself as that but now the torch passed onto me.

“How about on the way home,” I hastily suggested to him, “we stop by Hearst Castle. Have you been there at all?”

He shook his head.

“Oh, you're in for a treat.” We arrived in Morro Bay and I took him to a restaurant for a lunch of tuna melts. He kept quiet the whole time, gazing out the window to the street. He hardly said a word when we walked down the beach towards Morro Monolith. Despite his heavy sweater, he shivered from the sea spray. I set my arm around him to keep him warm. Even though the bruise on the back of his neck lightened up, the middle of his back felt like a steak beaten with a heavy metal meat tenderizer. At one point, he stooped down to pick up a pale pink and white conch shell the size of my index finger from the sand. He shook it a bit to rid of the extraneous sand before giving it to me. I examined the shell closer at the little bluish gray flecks along the pointed cap before tucking it into my coat pocket. We eventually returned to the truck to drive back up to San Simeon and Hearst Castle.

Since it was a Saturday and the weather proved otherwise, the Castle and Neptune Pool were both closed. The zebras bunkered up in the stable on the other side of the property but I wanted Patrick to at least see the Castle. He stared up at a tall, silent red tailed hawk eyeing him from atop a turret. Every time I peered over at him on the way home, the soft expression on his face slowly wore away and turned cold.

I never saw him over Thanksgiving; at school, I saw him for finals. He and Aunt Christina seemed to have disappeared over Christmas, too. The court scheduled the laying of the groundwork in February. I confessed to Dad I wanted to forget the process altogether and pry them out of the house. Although he agreed with me, things needed to be done before they could leave and the wheels were already in motion. Since he was a minor, Patrick was a whole other ordeal.

For my birthday, Mom got me some new pajamas, a new comb, a Scorpion Pen, and a big colorful serape blanket. The week after, upon walking to school, I stopped in front of the house. Someone hung a big black curtain in the front window, blocking my view into the living room. I stared at my own reflection within a thin layer of frost.

I never saw Patrick at school then, either. Mr Crowe finally asked me about him and I confessed I missed him. At one point in French class, I finally wrote “ _Qui se souviendra de toi? Je me souviendrai de toi._ ” on a yellow sticky note and stuck it under Patrick's desk, hoping he would find it the next class; Mom and Dad were curious about the black curtain and Patrick's absence when I came home.

A month later, during preparation for the AP exams, and because no one had seen him, I began worrying about Patrick. They missed the court date, thus it had been pushed back to the middle of May, during the exams. I wanted him to pass biology. I considered walking down to the house but Dad talked me out of it. He told me I had done enough already, but I wanted to at least see him. But I needed to focus myself, especially since my history and biology exams took place on the same day and the same day I needed to hand in the registration form for senior classes before the front office closed.

During the English exam, I sat in a chair next to a kelly green door at the back of the library. Mrs. Sanger, the aide overseeing the exam, told me no one ever went in there unless they had a key. Outside, I recognized Sully underneath a tree, reading a book. I missed him, too, and Victor hardly ever spoke about him.

Patrick never showed for the biology exam. His absence and the fact I had Miss Knight for a teacher left me feeling like a failure. I knew I passed history, but biology, and Patrick, were out of the question.

I walked past the house the way home. I considered peeking into the back window again, but I needn't risk it, especially when my registration form was due.

I signed up for AP English, government, and macroeconomics, as well as chemistry and pre calculus. I had to forfeit third year French for fourth year AP Latin and art, but I vowed to continue learning French because I loved it as much as Latin. I finished English and algebra with high B grades and aced history, French, Latin, and art. My lowest grade was biology, but I managed to pull through with a solid B and a sneer from Miss Knight. Perhaps Principal Hatchett finally knocked some sense into her.

When Mom and I parked in front of the office, and I climbed out with the orange registration form in hand, I spotted Fiona and Billy emerging from the front office.

“Rowena!” Fiona called out as they embraced me. I knew Billy was feeling better as he let me hug him.

“Haven't seen you in a while,” he remarked, letting me go, “how've you been?”

“All right,” I confessed. “I have to turn this in—” I showed him the form. “I passed English and biology, by the way.”

His face lit up. “Oh, that's wonderful! I thought you could do it. Hate to say this, but we can't stay long. We're moving.”

My heart sank. “What? Where?”

“Back to New Hampshire,” Fiona glumly told me.

“Yeah, our dad is being asked back. We also have a bad feeling,” Billy added. “A bad feeling about that family your dad's taking to court. About a month ago, I felt things are getting scary around here. I know it's not nerves talking, either, because they all feel the exact same way.”

“To be honest, we really don't want to be a part of it,” she joined in. “We're scared, especially for you guys, even though we've no reason. So around the end of February, we started packing and sending our stuff back to the Eastern Seaboard. Right after graduation, we're boarding a plane and leaving, back to West Chesterfield. So, if in the chance we don't see each other again—” Fiona threw her arms around me. She was my best friend. We started kindergarten together and knew each other's secrets. It felt like someone pulled the rug from underneath my feet. I embraced Billy, too.

“I'm going to miss you guys so much,” I confessed, feeling the tears already.

“We're going to miss you, too, Capricorn sister,” he tearfully confessed.

“You should get going, Rowena,” Fiona gently coaxed me. “The office closes in ten minutes. We'll write and call. I promise.”

Mark was my only friend left behind in Monterey after that summer. Ashley and her parents moved away to Portland two weeks after graduation. I split the summer into four parts: one part reading the first chapter of my government book with miniscule text for the summer assignment, one part tending to the produce, one part with my parents, and one part alone.

At one point, I needed a magnifying glass in order to read the textbook because it strained my eyes. The Patterson Peaches, the lemons, and the avocados survived the cold winter and developed even bigger and fuller than ever before. Mom tended to her novel all summer long to meet the October 15 deadline. Dad was frequently absent, spending most of his time either at his office or making trips to San Francisco and Salinas. On the Fourth of July, Dad announced Aunt Christina withdrew Patrick from school over Christmas break.

Around that time, Aunt Indigo had a book signing at a bookstore in Santa Cruz and we had dinner with her afterwards. She told us about a brunet boy asking her about some place mentioned in _New Age Alchemy_ called “Ninguit Nix Nivis in die Nix,” and she told him it was the coldest and most uncharted place in Antarctica. Most explorers avoided the region because of the deathly cold. She confessed it to feeling like a mistake going there in the winter time but she needed accurate data and she soon high tailed it back to Cape Horn. The name of the place by itself sent shivers down my spine.

A week later, I took a walk down the block after lunch. Old church bells rang a few blocks away as I stopped in front of the house on the corner, which still looked vacant. I heard Patrick and Aunt Christina's voices behind the shabby, decrepit door from the street. I froze in place when the door opened a few inches and his vehemently demanding in a broken voice, “Aunt Chris, why are you so afraid of riding in the car?” The door slammed so hard, I thought it was going to collapse off its hinges.

I wanted to give him something for his birthday, even if it was just a handmade card. I doubled back to my house, where Mom knelt down on the grass with her shiny sharp hedge clippers with wooden handles, trimming the hedge below the living room window.

“Mom, do we have any glitter?” I asked her. She stopped trimming and wiped her brow with her red bandana.

“I think so,” she slowly replied, “there might be some in Dad's office, like in the bottom desk drawer. Go take a look—I need to get away from that typewriter for a while.” I entered the cool house and ambled down the hall to Dad's office. I opened the bottom drawer of his desk, where he kept a few pairs of scissors, a handful of pencils with heavier graphite, and a couple of glue sticks, but no glitter. There was nothing in my room I considered giving away, either.

I started school alone, without a friend to coalesce with, although I hoped Victor would share one of my classes for my senior year. I climbed out of the truck and silently walked to English class, which I had first period again. Victor and Sully were nowhere to be seen amongst the hordes of students on the grass.

I approached the classroom door, two doors down from Mrs. Rocco's class. I leaned against the wall and took out my journal and the Scorpion Pen. If my senior year was to be spent alone, I may as well document it. The dark blue hooked handle of the pen shimmered like a spiral galaxy in the early morning sun. I was about to write the question “ _Qui se souviendra de toi?_ ” at the top of the page when a smooth, low voice stopped me in my tracks.

“Excuse me—”

A tall boy loomed above me. He had a round, full face with smooth skin, an upturned button nose, a shallow dimple in his chin, prominent dark eyebrows, and spacey gray eyes. He wore a black felt fedora over thick dark brown wavy hair which hung near the base of his neck. He was otherwise slim despite his deep chest and full waist, accentuated by a lilac button down shirt with the British flag embroidered on the right sleeve and black trousers. I saw he wore the same black Chuck Taylors as me.

“Yes?” I squeaked out.

“I'm new here. Word about the cafeteria is you know this place like the back of your hand. Could you show me around?”

The memory of showing Patrick around campus came back to haunt me, but he seemed more at ease. I put my journal and Scorpion Pen back in my courier bag before climbing to my feet. He towered over me: the crown of my head reached halfway up his chest.

“I take that as a 'yes',” he replied with a sweet little smile.

“What's your name?” I kindly asked him.

“Ivan Wilson. My name is actually Ivan Sorenson-Wilson, but my schedule says otherwise—” He took a bright pink sheet of parchment out of his pocket for me. His full name was a bigger mouthful than mine: Ivan Aloysius Benedict Matthew Nathaniel Wilson. He had Honors English with Mrs. Morrison, my freshman Honors English teacher.

“You're a freshman?”

“Yeah. I moved here over the summer. All the way from Winnemucca, Nevada.”

“I've only heard of that place,” I confessed.

“It's on the halfway mark of I-80, going from Reno to Elko. My parents wanted to move to the coast because it's cooler here and not as desert-y.”

I chuckled at that. “I'm Rowena and I'm a senior.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. I'm alone this year, too. All my friends were a year ahead of me and they either moved away over the summer or they just don't come here anymore.” He seemed genuinely surprised at that. He rested a hand on my shoulder with such a gentle grip.

“Would you like for me to be a friend to you for this year?” he offered.

“Yes!” I exclaimed. He showed me that kind little smile once again. I rescanned his schedule.

“Let's see—Mrs. Morrison's class? I had her for Honor's English when I was a freshman, too. You're going to have so much fun with her. It's right down there—” I pointed to the classroom at the far end of the corridor. “What else—you're taking Latin?”

“Is that a cool class, too?”

“I absolutely love Mr. Crowe. He's my favorite teacher. I have him for fourth year Latin, and I have Miss Black for fourth year art. You'll love her, too.”

“Fourth year everything. Man, you are just ambitious,” he quipped as he folded his arms over his chest.

“I want to be a nurse,” I declared. “A nurse and an artist.”

“Me, too! An artist, I mean—” He never finished because another tall boy passing by caught his attention. He had nappy jet black hair piled all over his head, some of which dangled down into his enormous dark eyes. He, like Ivan, had a full round face, a little button nose, and dark eyebrows, except his skin had a light rosy blush. He had a heavier, fuller body, too, with a deeper chest, a round protruding tummy, and wide hips. He wore a black and purple Mother Love Bone shirt under an opened black shirt, black jeans, and black Chuck Taylors as well.

“Hey, cousin Vinny!” Ivan greeted him with a high five.

“Ivan the Terrible!” he retorted in a gravelly voice and with a playful smirk. He brushed a lock of hair out of his eyes to see me. “Why—why, hello.”

“This is Rowena. She's a senior so if you need some showing around, talk to her. Rowena, this is Vincent St. Vitus. He's another new boy who moved here over the summer.”

“From—?”

“Roswell, New Mexico. Although my parents and I lived in Las Cruces with my Grandma Slate for a bit when I was a toddler. But, born and raised in Roswell.”

“We met just a couple of months ago,” Ivan explained. “It was weird: we moved into the houses across the street from each other. He walked up to me when I was helping my mom move in a couple of boxes and he started helping us. We introduced ourselves to each other and found out we're both new this year.”

“Boys from other worlds,” I followed along.

“Exactly!” Vincent's face lit up. He showed me his schedule: they had Mrs. Morrison for Honor's English together.

“When do you have lunch?” Ivan asked me. I took out my own schedule to read the time slots.

“High noon.”

“Hey, we do, too!” he declared.

“I get to go off campus if I want, though,” I playfully teased. They both glared at me and I busted out laughing.

“When do we get to go off campus?” Vincent curiously asked me.

“Your junior year,” I replied. “But you've gotta have permission, though. Otherwise, you just might get in trouble—” I reached out to poke his little belly which made him leap back into two other girls passing by. He turned as red as my typewriter as they giggled at him. Ivan and I burst out laughing as Vincent profusely apologized to them and they walked off giggling. He pushed his hair back to reveal his big dark eyes to us.

“Don't poke me,” he scoffed at me, still blushing.

“Why not?” I demanded. Ivan continued to laugh and sure enough, he started laughing, too. He coughed a few times before he could speak again.

“Anyways, I asked you that because maybe we can have lunch together,” he suggested, wiping his eyes. “To be honest, I was worried Vincent and I would have to spend this year alone ourselves.”

“Then it's a date,” I playfully confirmed. I never heard them laugh out at that from the bell ringing. I met up with them at noon for lunch time. My old friends had gone but here, oddly, I had two new ones.


	7. The Christmas Dinner Party

Mom carpooled to San Francisco to submit her manuscript and Dad had to submit important papers to the courthouse, so that whole week, I spent alone. Upon returning home from the first day of school, he left a note on the refrigerator with a ten dollar bill:

> _Hi, sweetie! Could you possibly go to the grocery store and pick up a can of coffee and a bag of green beans for dinner tomorrow night? Do it whenever it's convenient because I know you're up to your eyeballs in homework this year. Love, Daddy._

The only homework I had was studying for an economics quiz at the end of the week and reading poetry for English, but I decided to hold off for a day or two as I changed out of my boots and into my high tops. Besides, Dad nicely asked me.

I was Patrick's safe place, but I already began to feel close to Ivan and Vincent, despite just meeting each other. I was eager for them to meet my parents. I swiped the ten dollar bill from the refrigerator as I returned to the driveway. A fog bank began to build in from the ocean and bleed into the blue sky overhead in the form of feathery clouds.

I drove into town and took the front spot of the parking lot of the Old Monterey Marketplace. I scurried into the cozy farmer's market, where I was greeted by the smell of nutmeg, cloves, and cinnamon. I strolled down the aisle towards the produce section for the long, dark green beans. I was about to bag some when I felt a gentle tap on my shoulder. I turned around at Vincent kindly waving at me.

“Hi!” I greeted him. He embraced me and showed me a shy little smile. Two women behind him were baffled.

“Mom, Grandma Slate, this is that girl Ivan and I were telling you about, Rowena,” he introduced me. He gestured to the brown eyed brunette woman wrapped in a violet raincoat. “Rowena, this is my mother, originally from the beaches of Florida, Sonia St. Vitus—” She kindly shook my hand with a warm smile; she had turquoise rings on her index and middle fingers. The woman next to Mrs. St. Vitus had brilliant green eyes and pale skin, like that of a ghost. She had striking black hair tied in a bun partially obscured by a dark purple cartwheel hat with a black ribbon, two white roses, and a small ivory skull on the crown. She wore a long sleeved black gown with a black lace collar and hems. She wore a pendant which had a black relief of a scorpion over a pearly white background.

“—this is my grandmother Maya Slanovcic, or Grandma Slate as I call her.”

“Or the Scorpion Lady as everyone back in Roswell and Las Cruces knows her as,” Mrs. St. Vitus chimed in with a subtle Southern accent.

“What may I call you?” I asked her as she took my hand and gently held it between her hands. She had rings on every single finger, notably a black and red one of the rod of Aesclepius on her right middle finger.

“Grandma Slate, the Scorpion Lady, even just Maya if you like,” she assured me in a slight European accent. “Whatever you want, _krasna_. My dear husband and I both were originally from Praha.”

“From where?”

“Prague,” Vincent clarified. “Czechoslovakia. She and my Grandpa St. Vitus grew up and married in Prague, then they relocated to New Orleans where they raised my dad, my Uncle Emile, and my Aunt Nadia. Then my grandpa passed away, and she and the three of them moved to Las Cruces. She's just visiting for a week.”

“Just visiting? Vincent—” She reached up and gently patted his chubby face and pushed a tendril of hair out of his eyes. Mrs. St. Vitus and I both chuckled at them, before she turned to me.

“I'm glad you're here,” she promptly told me, “because Vincent and Ivan were going to invite you and your parents to a dinner party at the Wilsons' house over Christmas.”

I glimpsed at Vincent as Grandma Slate squeezed him around his waist. “Is this true?”

“Ah, yes—” he stiffly replied.

“So? What do you think?”

“I'd love to! I'll have to tell my mom and dad when they get home, though. My mom's a writer and she's up in San Francisco right now and my dad's a hardworking lawyer.”

“Alright! Sounds like a plan—Robin, you said your name was?”

“Rowena.”

“Rowena! We'll let you continue shopping. We've got a lot to do ourselves.” Mrs. St. Vitus winked at me; I peered past her again at Grandma Slate still holding Vincent around his waist.

“I'll tell Ivan—as soon as can—”

I nodded and returned to the green beans on display; I also bought a can of coffee before going home.

There was a bridge building between myself and Ivan and Vincent. I imagined myself driving over the bridge, comprised of rickety planks hollowed out with holes, stretched over a black hole. I gripped onto the steering wheel as I stared straight ahead to the other side of the bridge towards a black figure standing near the railing.

I blinked three times, before I watched the boy's body take shape. He resembled Patrick with his tall, slender build in black clothing. He had the same hair and facial features but something was missing. Someone had scratched out his eyes and closed up the sockets with extra skin. All of his facial features were still intact but his eyes disappeared. He held up his hands. I slammed on the brakes. I leaned forward as a faint, delicate whisper floated out from the back of his mouth. I closed my eyes for just a minute and reopened them as he had disappeared. I was back on Hellam.

A car roared past me blaring its horn. I sat at the stop sign for too long. I breathed out a sigh of relief as it was just another daydream. I eased on the accelerator and quietly returned home to see Dad. I told him about Ivan and Vincent and the dinner party at the Wilson house.

“Oh, that sounds lovely!” he declared, taking a seat at the table. “I wonder if Aunt Indigo would like to come with because she's coming down from Portland for Christmas, too. Do you know where they live?”

“No, I'll ask Ivan when I see them tomorrow.”

“By the way, we won't take them to a courthouse until January. That's just how it is with heavy cases like this: they need planning and put into the correct, appropriate time slots. Then you have issues like evidence and the possibility of a judge calling a mistrial. It can be a mess.”

“I told them you're an attorney,” I confessed. “I didn't dare tell them about Aunt Christina and Patrick, though.”

“Good. They don't need to know that, either. I'd rather they not know, too. Did one of them ask to bring something?”

“No. But, again, I'll ask tomorrow.”

Dad smiled at me. “That's my girl.”

Ivan and Vincent lived three blocks away from us on Franklin, the next block over from Hellam, and their houses were indeed across the street from each other when I carpooled them home that next day. The Wilson house was a little beach house with a gray roof, blue gray trimming over white walls, and a small pearly white front door with a window to the right. Two little terra cotta flower pots with two succulents with bright pink flowers lined the right side of the front step.

“We're the house with the Christmas cacti,” Ivan explained with a sweet little smile.

The St. Vitus house was a cute little two story house of cleanly scrubbed, pale brick with black trimming and a French style front door. Low lush green hedges surrounded the house and an oak tree with enormous green leaves stood in the front yard.

“And we're the house with the monster tree,” Vincent added with a smirk.

We always met up at lunch time and sometimes during our breaks. The week before Christmas break, Vincent's third period laboratory class let out late, so Ivan and I congregated outside the Monterey Cafe. I watched him grin at me as I awaited for him underneath the awning.

“Just you and me now,” I announced as he set down his bookbag. He removed his fedora and ran his fingers through his hair.

“For now, anyways,” he assured me with a wink.

“So all the times we've met up and I never got a chance to actually learn about you, Ivan. What's the story behind you?”

“Well, I was born and raised in Winnemucca, Nevada. My dad's originally from Cornwall, England, a retired pilot from the Royal Air Force. He flew one of planes in the fleet that liberated Normandy in World War II. My mom's a chef from Norway. They moved to Canada in 1950 and then emigrated to the United States in the '60s. They married in 1970.”

“1970, the same year as my parents,” I recalled. He raised an eyebrow.

“Really?”

“Yeah. When's your birthday?”

“April 16. I was born in 1978.”

“I was born January 3, 1975. Your mom's a chef?”

“Yeah.” He leaned against the wall next to me. “I love food because of her. One of my favorite things ever is—do you ever go to bed after a big meal and your stomach is all nice and warm?”

“Oh, yes.”

“That's one of my favorite things ever, especially living in northern Nevada where it's cold and snowy in the winter time.”

“Nevada gets that cold?”

“Oh, yeah. I thought Vincent was nuts when he said the same about New Mexico. The general assumption is desert equals hot all year.” He moved closer to me when more students filtered into the quad. “We also get a lot of 'why the middle of nowhere?' When they came to America, my parents wanted to move somewhere remote. They simply didn't want city people to preach to me. So they picked an unknown town in the middle of the high desert. They thought about one of the small towns in Nebraska or Oklahoma, but they were like 'nah, too many tornados.' They considered the outskirts of Albuquerque, but they chose Winnemucca. Mom says she liked saying the name, like it rolled off the tongue better than Elko or Las Vegas.”

“I'm sure Winnemucca has its share of small town gossip, too,” I pointed out, remembering all the circulating rumors about Aunt Christina.

“Definitely. But I learned from a young age that opinions don't make it true. That's another upside of having migrant parents: they told me I have this one body—” He set his right hand on his chest. “—and this one mind—” He pointed at his temple with the same hand. “—and it's my job to take the best care of them and go for as long as I can. That's how I learned to tune out gossip and nasty word of mouth because I know it's untrue.”

The bell rang. Ivan put his fedora back on and picked up his bookbag.

“Shall we talk more?” I suggested.

“Of course. We're so excited to meet your parents, by the way. The date of the party, I forgot to add, is the eve of Christmas Eve at seven.”

“Should we bring anything?”

“If you'd like to, that'd be wonderful. Like a bottle of wine for our parents or a pie for us all. I'd appreciate a blueberry pie.” He gentle patted his stomach before stepping away.

I had never met a boy who had parents who taught him to love himself as I took Cornell notes during my economics lecture. Patrick seemed to have missed out on learning that from his mother. Living with Alastair and Aunt Christina coupled that.

I carpooled Ivan and Vincent home to meet my parents. Mom admired Ivan's fedora whereas Dad liked what he called his “powerful stance” because he stood with his spine erected. Mom kept wanting to get close to Vincent.

“Rowena's Aunt Indigo would love you boys,” Dad admitted, “she'd call you a couple of good looking roosters.”

Vincent's face lit up. “Indigo Patterson?”

My mouth dropped open. “Y—You know her?”

“She's the author of _New Age Alchemy_! Grandma Slate and I are obsessed with that book! I didn't know you were related to her!”

“She's my auntie,” I beamed, “I hope to be as diligent as her one day.” I glanced at Ivan who raised an eyebrow at me. I knew the dinner party was going to be interesting.

I had always loved Christmas on the Peninsula, with the lights glowing from beneath the San Francisco fog and the trees blanketed in frozen fog. Later on the sun burned off the fog to reveal the snowy Santa Lucia Mountains.

Aunt Indigo flew down on the 23rd, and joyfully accepted the invitation when Dad and I met up with her with a blueberry pie for the party. I told her about Vincent and his love of _New Age Alchemy_ and a twinkle emerged in her eye.

“I want to meet him,” she declared as she untied her bandana from her head.

Dad dressed in his best red velvet dinner jacket and matching trousers with a white silk button up shirt. Mom wore a blue velvet long sleeved fitted dress with a V shaped halter neckline. I wore my favorite dress, a red wine colored sleeveless dress decorated with little black velvet polka dots paired with my little black slip ons. Aunt Indigo wore her black silk robes with white lace trimming, her platinum atom pendant with a skull for the nucleus, and neatly combed her indigo hair into a pompadour. She held the blueberry pie with a sugar crumble top crust in her lap. I sighed through my nose as we passed the house on the corner, still devoid of life.

“Yeah, us, too, honey,” Dad admitted.

“It doesn't look like anyone's home,” I admitted. Aunt Indigo gently patted my shoulder. I hoped Patrick and Aunt Christina were alright. We turned onto Franklin and stopped in the middle of the street.

“Which house is it again?”

“The one with the Christmas cacti.” He eased forward to the driveway next to the front step with two flower pots with the blooming succulents. We climbed out to the freezing cold night altogether: Aunt Indigo held the pie in her hands and Mom rested a hand on my shoulder as we crowded to the front step. Dad knocked three times on the front door. There was a brief pause before Ivan opened the door to greet us. His hair trickled down from the crown of his head in dense wet curls. He wore a light rose fitted silk shirt with the collar popped open, and black and white pinstriped suspenders with black corduroy trousers. He smelled like spices, like a cup of spicy hot chocolate.

“Come on in,” he gestured, kindly grinning at us. We entered the warmly lit foyer and looked around. The living room to the left had a big luxurious royal blue couch and a heavy side table at one end. Perched atop the table was a heavy silver lamp with a white shade embroidered with red and yellow flowers. The dining room had a long black table surrounded by spindly chairs; the warm hallway before us stretched to the back of the house. Ivan spotted the pie in Aunt Indigo's hands.

“I assume that's blueberry.”

“Just like you asked, my good sir.” She flashed him a smart little smile as a tall woman in a red long sleeved dress entered the room from the kitchen. She had a bob of thin silver hair with a stripe of eggplant purple over her left temple, those same gentle gray eyes and snowy white skin with a kiss of blush. She carried some extra weight around her hips and her waist.

“I knew that was them,” she told Ivan with a smile in an educated accent.

“Everyone, this is my mother Elka Sorenson-Wilson. Mom, this is that girl Rowena—” She warmly smiled at me as we shook hands. “—her parents Hope and Matt—and her Aunt Indigo.” Mrs. Sorenson-Wilson paused for a minute.

“The same Indigo Patterson who wrote _New Age Alchemy_?”

“Yes!” Aunt Indigo was baffled as they shook hands.

“Ivan's friend Vincent—the boy across the street—absolutely loves that book. A lot. The other day, he was over here with his copy. He and Ivan were sitting at the kitchen table and garbing over it.”

“Gushing, Mom, the word is gushing,” Ivan corrected as she shrugged.

“Well, regardless, I have no doubt in my mind that this evening will be loads of fun—” She was cut off by a loud _clang!_ in the back of the house and a man shouting “dammit!” in a British accent.

“What was that?” Mom craned her neck to peer down the hallway.

“My dad,” Ivan casually replied.

“The other love of my life, my husband,” Mrs. Sorenson-Wilson added. There was another _clang!_ followed by an “Ow—ow—ouch—” She turned around. “Darling—Nicholas, what are you doing?”

He stumbled out from the back of the hallway and straightened himself up. He was tall like Ivan except he had striking white hair, enormous sparkling eyes, a crooked smile, and a bit heavier body. He wore a big black coat with white coattails and big black knee high leather boots. “I was just—looking for me coat. Ah! They're here!”

“Everyone, this is my dad Commodore Nicholas Wilson of the Royal Air Force from Cornwall, England,” Ivan introduced him. He gestured at me as if beholding an artwork. “Dad—this is Rowena—”

Commodore Wilson's face lit up as he lightly kissed the back of my hand.

“Infamous little white haired fair one!” he greeted me. “I've heard quite a bit 'bout you.” He glanced back at Ivan, who blushed.

“These are her parents Hope and Matt, and her auntie Indigo.”

“Oh, my, what a fair family we 'ave here!” Commodore Wilson commented. “Well, let us go into the other room and—” A knock on the door caught all of our attention.

“And there are the St. Vituses!” Ivan declared. He lunged past us to open the door. “Come on in—”

Vincent, Mr. and Mrs. St. Vitus, and Grandma Slate all looked as though they arrived from a funeral. Vincent, whose hair was still a shaggy mess, wore a fitted black shirt and matching corduroy trousers. Grandma Slate sported a black pillbox hat with black lace bow on the front bearing two light pink roses, a white sugar skull, and a bright blood orange relief of a scorpion, and wore a black lace gown; she still bore the scorpion pendant around her neck. Mr. St. Vitus had on a black dinner jacket over a black V-neck shirt whereas Mrs. St. Vitus wore a fitted black off the shoulder dress: he had jet black hair like his mother, brown eyes like his wife and son, but had slender, elegant fingers, like that of a pianist.

Vincent's face lit up as he recognized Aunt Indigo after we all shook hands and crowded into the dining room.

“Indigo Patterson!” he exclaimed.

“It's so good to finally meet you, Vincent. Come, sit next to me. I'd like to speak with you and your grandmother.”

Mrs. Sorenson-Wilson, with Ivan's assistance, gave us a choice of either a beef Wellingtons with a mushroom sauce or Atlantic salmon with rosemary and a twist of lemon: I chose the latter. They had a big bowl of mashed potatoes with the skins left on, a massive boat of gravy, Brussels sprouts seasoned with salt, pepper, and brown sugar, and of course, the pie. Mom, Dad and Aunt Indigo sat to my left and then Ivan, Mrs. Sorenson-Wilson, and Commodore Wilson were to my right. Mr. and Mrs. St. Vitus sat next to him, followed by Grandma Slate and Vincent rounding out the table. We ate off of small, matte black plates with white squares and used silver forks with a bubbly handles.

Ivan and I both were divided between hearing about Commodore Wilson's story about an incident with the Canadian Prime Minister whilst living in Ontario, and Vincent and Grandma Slate conversing with Aunt Indigo.

“—so he walks up to me,” Commodore Wilson was saying, “and says 'Commodore, rumor has it that you're a poet as well as a pilot. I'd like to read some of your poetry.' Well, little did he know I'm not a poet at all and he must'a confused me with someone else—”  
“Vincent and I just have one question, Indigo,” I heard Grandma Slate say, “what was that one elixir you were talking about called Fall of Saturn? It seemed so fascinating and yet formidable. Forgive me, I have been in love with darkness since the passing of my dear husband.”

“Ah, yes, the infamous Fall of Saturn, or 'black rain' as I call it—” Aunt Indigo began as she dug into her mashed potatoes.

“—so I'm pulling stuff out of me arse and I'm thinking, 'this can't be good. Mr. Prime Minister will hate this and see through me facade.' So I go back and run up the steps of the Canadian Parliament—”

“—highly toxic to any organism, it's one of the four cardinal elixirs, or the ones with a dual base. It's made of lead and iron, with herbs such as whole nutmeg and deadly nightshade. When ingested, it manifests as flu like symptoms, then symptoms akin to lead poisoning before progressing into organ failure. The organism dies a slow, painful death. Terrible concoction, but I'm actually glad the New Zealanders created it.”

“Is there an antidote or a cure?” Vincent asked her as he sliced into his beef Wellington.

“—Mr. Prime Minister looks at me and says, 'Commodore. This is genius. Welcome to Canada.' It felt like someone took a three kilo iron weight left behind the Cornish cliffs off of me shoulders!”

Mom, Dad, and Mr. and Mrs. St. Vitus burst out laughing so I couldn't hear Aunt Indigo's cure for Fall of Saturn. Ivan and I remained silent, until he finally turned to me.

“So what do you think of the salmon?” he asked in a low enough voice to where I could hear just him.

“I love it. I like the Brussels sprouts, too.”

“My mom also makes the best lutefisk. Silky smooth with potatoes, peas, and sometimes bacon. Have you ever had that?”

“I've heard of it, but no.”

“Oh, I'll tell her to make it the next time you're over. I don't know how she does it but she makes the humblest of food amazing.”

“Have you had pierogi?” I picked up another Brussels sprout.

“I have, yes! Have you had them with bacon?”

“Indeed I have! My mom's Polish and Ukrainian and one of her favorite things to make every so often is pierogi.” He smiled at me as he took another bite of potatoes. Afterwards, we dug into the pie with Mr. St. Vitus offering to give us whipped cream on our slices upon asking. The blueberries had the right balance of tangy and sweet. It was past eleven o'clock by the time Mom, Dad, and Aunt Indigo oftered to help Commodore Wilson put the food away into tupperware and into the refrigerator. Vincent lay down on the couch and rested his hands on his belly. I met up with Mrs. Sorenson-Wilson in the kitchen.

“It's funny,” I admitted to her, “four hours have passed but I don't feel full.”

“I don't, either,” she truthfully told me. “That has always been the power of big dinner parties like this: your plate becomes the periphery whereas the guests are the focus.”

“So do I rinse off the dishes and then put it into the dishwasher?”

“Absolutely. Nick and I will do what we can tonight, and that will be it. Your mum, dad, and aunt put the food away already.”

We drove back to the house at ten minutes to midnight. I gazed out the window at the Christmas lights lining the houses across the way and the St. Vituses crossing the street. I stared out the windshield to the house on the corner.

A faint glimmer of yellow light finally emerged from a window on the side of the house, one I missed upon going around the side. I made out the outline of a face staring out at us: I spotted the left eye, the side of the head, and the side of the neck. I had no clue who I was looking at, but I was the only one who noticed the face: neither Mom, Dad, or Aunt Indigo noted it by the time we returned home.


	8. The Operating Table

I opened my eyes to an overbearingly bright light. I blinked three times to better adjust to the light. I stared at five lights arranged in a pentagon shape superimposed on a metal disc. I glanced to my left: I had a heart monitor, a brain wave monitor, and a metal stand with two bags of antibiotics with tubes leading to syringes inserted into my left forearm. I wore a plain white hospital gown. I felt tiny needles poking into my scalp but there was no pain.

A tall man emerged by my side and hovered above me. He had shoulder length dishwater blond hair combed to the left side of a broad forehead and deep set dark eyes beneath thick eyebrows. He had a strong jaw and a handsome, lanky body wrapped in seafoam green scrubs.

“Nurse Basil!” I exclaimed as he snapped on latex gloves.

“Rowena,” he flatly replied. I watched him pull a hood over his head.

“Rowena Manzarek.” He referred to me by my mother's maiden name before stepping out of sight and returning with a proper oxygen respirator over his nose and mouth, and a protective glass visor. He breathed through black filters, sounding like Darth Vader.

“You're biohazardous,” he informed me. “I need to put you under.”

“Wait, Nurse Basil, what're you—”

He cupped a gas mask over my nose and mouth. I heard the low squeak of a gas valve turning. I inhaled and fell back into a pool of blackness, which gave way to an immense plane of pillowy golden yellow clouds. I landed on a deck of clouds and peered around me. Something big, blue, and slender approached me, something human with eight spidery limbs and a black pillbox hat on its head. It had golden catlike eyes lined with thick black spirals, and a button nose, and a mouth with full black lips.

“Vishnu—” I breathed.

“She's here,” Vishnu's voice sounded far away and close up, as if speaking through a tunnel, forwards and also backwards like a cassette tape put on upside down.

“But I—”

“She's here,” Vishnu insisted, turning his head to the glowing clouds as they faded out into nothingness. His eight arms and his body disintegrated into dust.

I blinked twice to find myself in a dark alleyway. The ocean loomed off in the distance; glimmers of pink and orange emerged from the sunset. Cold black dirt stretched beneath my bare feet. I stared straight ahead to a dumpster and a handful of metal trash cans; a tall slender man stepped out from behind the dumpster. He had no face, but frizzy curls piled all over his head. He wore all black, including black trousers rolled up to his knees and heavy shiny black boots. The man in black reached out to me with an open hand.

“Kiss me,” he ordered in a low voice.

“What? No.”

“Kiss me,” he repeated. “Kiss me—please—”

“I don't understand.”

“Death—come here and kiss me—please—”

“No!”

“Please—death—” I blindly ran towards the other end of the alleyway. I tripped. Fell onto my hands and knees. I snapped my eyes shut. The man in black was coming for me. Panting, I tried to think of my parents. It was useless and so I opened my eyes again.

A seafoam green curtain on a rail separated me from the rest of the room. I rolled my head to the right only to be met with bright white sunlight. The steady beep of a heart monitor and a man speaking in a gruff monotone grew clearer.

“—and here is our patient of the day. A young human female, late teens, about five three, no more than a hundred pounds. An anonymous gentleman in black brought her in. Vitals are stable but her toxicity charts indicate she's full of scorpion venom. Her brain waves are off the charts, too. I've never seen anything like this in my thirty years.”

“Looks like she's waking up?” another man in a low, carrying voice pointed out. I blinked a few more times; they stood at the foot of my bed. The tall svelte one on the left had a mop of frizzy reddish brown hair, deepset somber green eyes, and a pale oval face with a straight nose and a little dimple in his chin. He wore blue latex gloves and a white lab coat with the biohazard symbol and the rod of Aesclepius both embroidered on his chest pocket. The burly, swarthy one on the right had long black hair tied in a ponytail, enormous brown eyes, a large beaklike nose, and a dense black beard that reached his neck. He wore the exact same blue gloves and white lab coat. He carried a dark brown clipboard and wore a tiny bright orange, red, and pink calavera around his neck.

“Where am I?” my voice broke.

“Monterey Community Hospital,” the man on the left promptly told me.

“Who are you?”

“I'm the Neurobiologist. I'm studying your brainwaves and the venom in your veins. This is my assistant, the Necromancer.”

“I'm studying the progress—or reverse progress, I should say—of your body,” the Necromancer explained.

“R-Reverse progress?” I stammered.

“Yes. You're dying, Miss Manzarek.”

“I—I don't understand—”

“You're full of venom from the deathstalker and the Arizona bark species of scorpion,” the Neurobiologist gravely explained to me. “It's eating away your spinal cord and your brainstem. We're unable to extract it from you either, although a simple flick of the wrist and the scalpel should've worked but no one wants to undertake that without putting on a haz-mat suit. In fact, I'm surprised your heart hasn't stopped yet.”

“Why am I full of venom, though?”

“That's the thing,” the Necromancer pointed out, “we're not sure. We only know it's slowly eating away at you because one of the things you're experiencing right now is hallucinations.”

“But I'm not hallucinating—”

A third man appeared from behind the curtain. He had shoulder length black hair, deep Asian eyes behind a pair of wire framed glasses, and olive skin. He wore soft blue scrubs and carried a plunger and an iron meat tenderizer. I rubbed my eyes.

“Who are you?” I demanded as my heart monitor beeped faster.

“You're hallucinating, Miss Manzarek,” the Neurobiologist rose his voice.

“The Organ Grinder,” the man growled in a low monotone. “I'm here to take care of business.” He rose the meat tenderizer to my head.

“Help me!” I shouted to the Neurobiologist and the Necromancer but they simply stood there at the foot of my bed as the Organ Grinder prepared to make me into toxic hamburger. “Help me!”

“Miss Manzarek—” I recognized Nurse Basil's voice. He still hovered over me with the respirator over his face. I was still on the operating table. He coldly stared at me. “The Neurobiologist and the Necromancer brought you here. I didn't give you enough anesthesia, either. I need to take your weapon now.” He still stared at me as he reached beneath the table for something.

“Nurse Basil, what are you doing?”

“Apparently quarantine isn't enough for you. The very air you exhale out onto my respirator is too toxic even for the filters. You're dangerous so I need to do what the Organ Grinder asked me to do and that's dismantle you. It's going to be like dismantling the Tsar Bomba so I need to stop you one digit at a time—”

He showed me a pair of iron bolt cutters with bright orange handles. The blades shone in the white light.

“What are you doing?” I demanded as he hovered above my left arm. He raised the bolt cutters above my pinky finger.

“Nurse Basil,” I repeated, panicking, “what are you doing?” He opened bolt cutters above my finger.

“Nurse Basil—”

“Spare goes first,” he blankly told me.

“Nurse Basil, what—? Nurse Basil, I—NURSE BASIL! NO!”

I shot my eyes open and sat upright. Total darkness surrounded me. I was back in my bed in my room. Heavily breathing, I stared out at dim orange light filtering through my window. That was the first time I ever experienced a dream inside a dream. My left hand tingled; I had stuck it between my thighs. I took it out from underneath the covers and shook it about for the blood to flow again. I glanced at the time on my desk clock, which read four thirty in the morning. I lay my head back down and tried to go back to sleep.


	9. The Rose and the Library

I leaned back against my headboard as _Blood Sugar Sex Magik_ played in my ears. It was two days before Valentine's Day; I thought about staying in touch with Ivan and Vincent when I left for college. I wondered if Patrick planned on attending college. I set my heart on University of Santa Cruz because it was close by. I hoped for an acceptance letter some time in the next month.

I told Ivan and Vincent about the Nurse Basil dream when they joined me for hot chocolate and cookies on my birthday.

“It's funny you say that because,” Vincent started in a low voice, “he and I had the exact same dream, everything down to the respirator. I keep meaning to ask Grandma Slate about it but every time I see her, it always slips from mind. She returned to Las Cruces yesterday so I definitely can't ask her now.”

I closed my eyes and let the music flow over me like a wave. I thought of Ivan on the title track.

That day at school, he hugged me from behind to keep me warm. He wore a black jacket over a black V neck, both of which hugged every curve of his body to make him appear fuller than normal. His body was always warm and soft, especially on the cold stormy days; he would hold my head to his chest and I listened to his heartbeat. Over the music, I heard a knock on my door. I hit pause on my disc player and removed my headphones.

“Rowena?” Mom called through the door.

“Yes!” I called out. She poked in her head.

“Dad and I are going downtown to put in the final papers at the courthouse. We'll be back in a little bit. Also—”

She pushed the door open even further to show me a white envelope, a rich red envelope paired, and a lavender rose.

“These came for you. The red envelope is from Ivan and the white one is from Santa Cruz.”

My heart skipped several beats as I slid off the bed onto the floor. I set Ivan's envelope and the rose down on the bed and carefully opened the one from Santa Cruz. My heart sank and my shoulders slumped as I read the letter.

“What's the matter?”

“'Dear Miss Patterson, while we're pleased to inform you that your application has been received, we're sorry to tell you that you have been rejected admittance into University of California at Santa Cruz. Please call this number if you have any questions. Best regards, the Admissions Office.'” I bowed my head.

“Oh, honey!” Mom threw her arms around me. While I buried my face in her chest, I felt this strange wave of relief. I was staying with Ivan and Vincent a little while longer. But on the other hand, my dream of becoming a nurse with an artistic streak, and my AP scores from the previous year, had been thrown up in the air. Mom sighed. She pushed a tendril of hair from my brow.

“Well—honestly, I wasn't willing to let you go just yet,” she assured me. “We need you, too.”

“I get to be with Ivan and Vincent longer, too,” I added. She showed me a bittersweet smile as I turned to the red envelope and the rose on my bed. I carefully opened the envelope and removed a white card with a small red stitched paper heart sewn in the middle. I opened the card and something fell out onto the bed. I recognized Ivan's chicken scratch handwriting on the inside:

“'To the kind girl who introduced Vincent and me to the Peninsula, just when we thought we'd be here alone. Happy Valentine's Day, my sweet friend. Kiss, hug, kiss, hug.' Oh, God, that's so—wait, what's this?” I picked up the two other things.

“What is it?” Mom asked me.

“It's a ticket to see Darrell Hammond and Dana Carvey do stand up at the Granada Theater down in Santa Barbara on the sixth!” I picked up a scrap of notebook paper with Ivan's handwriting.

“'Just a few days ago, I won two tickets over the radio to see them. I checked the date and it's a Saturday. Dana's on _Saturday Night Live_ —they have the week off then—and Vincent and Mrs. St. Vitus introduced me to Darrell and his dead on impressions. You'll love him, he's so funny. I got one and I'm inviting you.'” I turned to Mom, who nodded at me.

“I don't see why not. You are eighteen now and he is a sweet boy. Santa Barbara's bit of a long haul but it's doable in one day. That little truck is tough and we're finally getting a camper shell for it next week. Your dad and I also drove further than that to go see Eric Clapton and Elton John.”

I gaped at her. “Really?”

“Yeah. You were about two and Aunt Indigo came down to babysit you, and we drove out to Las Vegas to see them at Planet Hollywood. Santana also opened for them.” She picked up the rose from the bed to examine the petals. She stared at the wall for a minute before speaking again. “You know that glass vinaigrette bottle in the bottom cupboard next to the oven?”

“Yeah.”

“Fill it up three quarters of the way with water and that should enough for the rose. Anyways, we have to go. I'll tell Dad everything—” She hugged me one more time before disappearing into the hallway. As soon as the front door closed, I headed down to the kitchen with the rose in hand. I picked the vinaigrette bottle from the cupboard and used the water from the tap before sliding the rose inside. I noticed a small glass dijon mustard jar sitting next to the sink: the mustard inside was bright yellow. I was unsure who left it there but because the jar was glass, I gently placed it on the garbage pile in the trash can. I closed the lid and washed my hands before taking the jar with the rose to my room.

Mom and Dad bought a camper shell for the truck later that week, although Ivan and I decided to make the four hour drive down and back that night. That Saturday morning, I dressed in a red silk shirt over a black camisole and charcoal gray jeans, and slipped on my black Chuck Taylors, then drove to his house at eleven. I honked the horn and waited a minute before he jogged outside. He wore his fedora, an oxblood red silk shirt with little blue forget-me-nots embroidered on the chest pocket, and a black V-neck shirt underneath with matching jeans. He grinned at me through the open window.

“Ready?” I kindly asked him.

“I was born ready. You got your ticket?”

“In my purse.”

He patted the roof then wound around the hood of the truck to the passenger seat. We followed Franklin towards Highway 1.

“First off, I dig the fact you guys finally got a camper shell,” he commented as I made the green light and shifted into third gear at the on-ramp. “Second—and I've been meaning to tell you this, too—I like how you drive a stick shift like it's no one's business.”

“I learned to drive and got my license in this truck. The only thing I haven't done yet is go on a long road trip that includes staying overnight.”

“With another person or by yourself?”

“Either one. This doesn't count because it's only a four hour drive, and it'll be pretty late when we return home. The good news is we'll have surpassed rush hour traffic.”

When we reached San Simeon and Hearst Castle, Ivan clicked on the radio. He smiled when he recognized the voice over the wave of static.

“That sounds like Kurt,” he commented, turning the volume up a bit.

“A new Nirvana song!” I declared. “I haven't heard this yet. My old friends Ashley and Fiona loved Nirvana. Soundgarden, Alice in Chains, and Pearl Jam, too.”

“Have you listened to Hole? Kurt's wife's band?”

“Don't think I have.”

“I heard them a lot back home in Winnemucca and thought 'damn! This rocks!' You might like them—it's the whole 'headstrong, shameless girl' image.”

“Do you guys like the Chili Peppers?”

“Oh, love the Chili Peppers! Vince does, too!”

“They're my favorite band,” I proudly replied.

“If they and Nirvana tour up in San Francisco, we should go see them,” he suggested and I beamed at that. I merged onto Highway 101 at San Luis Obispo to bypass Pismo and Avila Beaches to save us some time, although it was a few hours before they walked on stage. I flashed back on my day trip with Patrick. I hoped he was well in that vacant looking house. They felt so close and yet so far away, as if in another world.

We rolled into northern Santa Barbara within a couple of hours. I turned off at State Street and the cozy northern neighborhood lined with oak and palm trees. We stopped at the first red light and I rubbed my eyes.

“I know the answer to this already,” I began, “but would you like something to eat first?”

“Absolutely. Besides, we've got plenty of time.”

The light turned green and we headed down State Street. I couldn't decide if what we had was late lunch or early dinner, until Ivan declared, with his mouth full of French fries, “If juff food!”

Afterwards, we parked the truck in the garage behind the theater and strolled up the street to visit the little shops. A cool damp oceanic breeze sent a shiver down my spine. I stuffed my hands into my pockets as Ivan guided me into a hat shop, a vast, dimly lit but warm singular room. Black shelves lined the walls beholding every kind of hat I could think of, from fedoras to pillboxes. The young clerk at the desk greeted us.

“Well, we mainly just came in here because it's getting chilly out—” Ivan started. I spotted a plum colored bowler hat on the table next to the cash register. I picked it off the table and placed it onto my head.

“Ivan—” I called out. He and the clerk took a glimpse at me and both gave a thumbs up, so I bought the hat for thirty dollars. After I thanking him, we returned outside. I shivered once again on going up to the corner as the breeze billowed down the street. We were about to reach the corner when Ivan draped his silk shirt over me.

“I don't like you shivering like that,” he confessed. “Don't worry about me. I'm used to the cold, anyways.”

I held his shirt close to my body as he tucked his hands into his pockets as we reached the corner. We doubled back to the theater, all the while gazing out to the darkening ocean before it disappeared. We neared the theater, where a small crowd of people congregated before the glass front doors. The clock on the wall inside will call showed six thirty so we took a seat on the bench in front of the doors.

“I love that hat on you,” Ivan complimented. I showed him a shy smile.

“Well, I've always loved your hat,” I retorted. He chuckled, showing me his dimples. Within time, the doors opened and, after proving we could come in, we filtered into the brightly lit corridor with a creamy white ceiling lined with gold trimming. Smoked mirrors plastered the walls on either side of us as we crossed a plush red carpet, the same color as Ivan's silk shirt.

“I guess it's just going to be a small audience,” I noted.

“I think so, too,” he added, peering behind us. It would be another fifteen minutes before the ushers in the maroon velvet jackets showed us our seats in the vast but intimate theater. We were about five rows back from the stage, which beheld two wooden chairs on either side of a small black table.

They very easily could have been brothers. Dana reminded me of Mark: tall and slender, but with blond hair and fairer complexion, whereas Darrell had finer lighter hair swept across his head; he was quite a bit heavier, much like Vincent.

Ivan and I were in tears from laughing so hard at their countless impersonations. After some time, because we were laughing so hard, they pointed us out, referring to us as “the kids with the badass hats.” At the end of the show, Ivan guided me to the stage. Dana showed us a big smile and Darrell a crooked smile as we came closer. They shook our hands and kindly thanked us for coming before retreating backstage.

It was nearly ten o'clock before we headed down Highway 101, continuing to quote them and laugh the whole way back to Solvang. When we stopped for fuel, I couldn't believe it: I met Dana Carvey and Darrell Hammond. We were in fifth row and found the opportunity to meet them and shake their hands. I fanned myself a bit as I climbed back into the cab of the truck with two water bottles. Ivan had guzzled down half of his water before I even started up the truck. I gaped at him as he set it down onto his lap.

“Goodness, you were thirsty!”

“Yeah, I was. I haven't had anything to drink since we ate—lunch. Or dinner. Whatever it was.”

I chuckled at that as we departed for Santa Maria. I merged onto the dark Highway 1: the only light emanated from our headlights and the nearly full moon looming large in the otherwise inky black sky.

“Ivan, can I ask you something?”

He cleared his throat. “Of course.”

“I've been meaning to ask you this, too. How exactly did you and Vincent—'click,' I'd say? Aside from the obvious you're both desert rats, and new kids, and you helped each other move in. I just—want to know more about him because even though we see each other all the time, I haven't fully gotten to know him.”

He sighed through his nose. I glanced at him again as he stared out at the grassy foothills along the road.

“Vincent, like me,” he began, “has always had a profound love of nature. In New Mexico, they have specialized chile peppers that only grow there. For example, the other day, we were comparing notes to how California is to Nevada and New Mexico, and he said one thing he's still getting acquainted with is not being asked if he wants red or green chile peppers, or both, on his food when they go out to eat. When they were living in Roswell, they were like you and your parents, growing their own produce in their backyard. They never sold any, but that was their homemaking hobby, especially for Mr. and Mrs. St. Vitus because they both work in pharmacy. Vincent participated and after he was successful the first time around, he picked up a biology book at the age of six. He says there's a cure for everything, and for some things, we just haven't found it yet.”

“That sounds like something my Aunt Indigo would say,” I remarked, remembering Billy.

“I think it is,” he agreed. “I brought that up because, in a way, he's like us: he's curious, very smart and sweet, and he loves food.”

“Is that why he's so chubby?”

“Nah, he's chubby because he's more heavily built, a lot fuller compared to me. When I start packing on the pounds, it's gonna go right to my gut, but in his case, it goes all over his body. He'd feel uncomfortable, like he used to go on crash diets to lose weight and they never worked so he often went from svelte to borderline fat. The other reason he's so chubby is because—”

He paused for a minute.

“Now, when we see him again tomorrow or Monday or whenever, please, please, _please_ do me a solid and don't tell him I told you this because it's kind of a hard subject for him to speak about. I feel terrible talking about this, too.”

“I won't. I'll take secrets to the grave. Sometimes the most interesting stories are that way.”

“Excellent! So, this was a couple of years ago, before we moved here. I don't remember what he was doing but he accidentally swallowed this weird silvery white liquid, thinking it was just heavy cream. Next thing he knows, his stomach is in utterly excruciating pain. Think your worst monthly pains amped up to about a thousand, so painful you could puke. He told his parents and they rushed him to the hospital. He had to get his stomach pumped and he couldn't eat for a whole week. He lost about sixteen pounds.”

“What was it? Did they found out?”

“Nope, that's what's weird about it is they never did. He thinks it's something your aunt wrote about. Some concoction called Fall of Mars. It's like silver and ozone based with some other stuff mixed in and it's supposed to be like an anesthetic but it's nightmarishly corrosive to human flesh. Do you know what I'm talking about?”

“I think so,” I reluctantly answered. “I remember Aunt Indigo had notes on four concoctions correlating to the four cardinal directions and the medicine wheel but I can't fully remember. The name sounds familiar, though.”

“I think that's what's tripping me up about the whole thing is this stuff was all natural and yet they couldn't pick it up…” His voice trailed off.

“So, he couldn't eat for a week and lost sixteen pounds.”

“Right, he was wary of any food so he got really thin. He showed me a picture of himself from that time and his face was gaunt. You know that shirt he wore on the first day of school? Over his Mother Love Bone shirt?”

“Yeah.”

“It used to be loose on him. He wore it just like a regular old shirt. So when he decided food wasn't the enemy, he got those sixteen pounds back, plus another fifteen. When they moved to the house across the way, he said he gained another ten, so that shirt doesn't properly fit him anymore. But he still wears it open like that because it's one of his favorite shirts.”

He fell silent for a bit as we drove past Hearst Castle, now pitch black except for candles in a few of the windows.

“I should also add—this is just an observation, but I think he likes you. Like—more than a friend. He won't tell me, but it's not a bad guess.” My heart skipped a few beats at the sound of that.

“This is terrible of me, but is—is that why you gave me a card and a rose?”

He gaped at me in stunned silence.

“No—” he replied, sounding a bit hurt. “No, not at all. I gave you the card and the rose because—I—”

I glanced back at him again, this time with eyebrows raised.

“—I like you. You really are a friend to me. I mean, if my hunches are right and Vincent really does like you, all that tells me is you're of good nature. That tells me you're amiable. I mean, you want to help people. In particular, your old friend's brother with fibro—what's it called again?”

“Fibromyalgia.”

“Fibromyalgia, that's it! You're really close to your parents and you're kind to everyone. In the six months we've known each other, I've never heard you talk smack about anyone. I mean, did you see Dana and Darrell's eyes light up when they saw you?”

“I haven't said thank you once to you today, though,” I confessed.

“That's okay. Sometimes I slip up and forget, especially if they're still sort of new to me. It's nothing to feel ashamed of.”

It was nearly two o'clock in the morning by the time I dropped off Ivan at his house. He was about to climb out of the truck when I stopped him.

“Ivan—”

He gazed back me. The porchlight reflected onto the right side of his round face, the iris in his right eye, and soft white skin: he actually resembled a last quarter moon. He raised his eyebrows a bit.

“—thank you,” I choked out.

“For what?” He knitted his eyebrows together.

“Everything. Letting me borrow your shirt, inviting me to a comedy show and meeting those two lovely guys, giving me that card and that rose… everything.” The corners of his mouth twisted into a sweet little smile.

“And thank you, Rowena.” He hugged me before he climbed out onto the driveway. We waved at each other as I backed out to the street. I headed back to the house to see Dad still waiting up for me.

Over the next couple of weeks, my class began preparation for midterms and graduation. I remained on the outside of Mrs. Wahlstrom's class while everyone congregated inside to sign up for the AP exams. I maintained a solid B grade for pre-calculus, my most difficult class, in the wake of midterms. I also found two beautiful photographs, one of Dana and one of Darrell, to accompany Keanu Reeves on my nightstand.

I had no desire to attend prom or to grad night, especially since I had no date to either one. But I volunteered to help set up for prom night with Vitantonio Villa, a few other of my AP art classmates, Miss Black, and some of the drama students the few nights before in the middle of May.

Mom and I baked Ivan a batch of cupcakes with lemon crème on top for his fifteenth birthday. We were about to make the crème when the lemon zester came up missing. Mom opened the drawer next to the sink for the brass key to the shed in the backyard.

“Rowena, don't ask me why but I think I left the zester out in the shed.”

I took the key and jogged outside to the small wooden shed in between the lemon tree and the avocado tree. A heavy metal padlock rested against the door. I opened the door to find two rakes, two shovels, a pitchfork, an ax, a gardening hoe, four empty tin buckets, and a big bag of mulch, all on either side of a wooden workshop table covered with old flower pots, a couple of hand shovels, a red watering can, a faded green hose with a black nozzle, Mom's hedge clippers, a box of fireplace matches, a hatchet, three pairs of gardening gloves, and—

“Ah! There it is!”

The lemon zester lay in between the gloves and the hedge clippers. As I picked it up off the table, I stared at the shiny sharp blades of the hedge clippers. I found it fascinating how Mom always kept them so clean and polished. I snapped the padlock shut before returning to the house. We celebrated Ivan's birthday at their house after school because his parents took him to the Santa Barbara Zoo over the weekend. He wore a nice black coat with little British and Norwegian flags sewed on the left sleeve.

At one point, he invited me to dance with him to Mother Love Bone's song “Gentle Groove” and that was prom for us. He guided me all around the living room with his hand in mine. I kept sliding my hand down his back towards his hips and he snickered every time. I briefly glanced down to that one button fastened above his stomach and his white shirt gently poking out. I wanted to lightly caress him but not when our parents had their eyes on us. But I peered back up at him right as the song ended and closed my eyes.

“Now kiss each other!” Vincent jokingly exclaimed and we all erupted in laughter.

Ivan stayed on my mind for the following month: I wanted to take him to the actual prom but I felt that to be enough. Thinking about him made my whole face and neck feel warm. We needn't have any other eyes on us while we were dancing.

I thought about him when I walked to the school for set up in Harmon Gym and to pick up my cap and gown. I briskly strode to the double doors of the gym where Miss Black met me with a smile.

“Rowena! Glad you could make it! I hate to send you back outside but I left the scissors, tape, and streamers in the library and my feet are already aching. Could you be a dear and get all that?”

“Oh, absolutely! Are they all on one table?”

“Yes. I left the doors unlocked, too, so you can just run in and out.”

I doubled back to the library. Three little birds chirped over my head as I briskly strode towards the dimly lit front doors of the library which had only one overhead light turned on. Cool air flooded out as I opened the door.

From the doorway, I spotted a pair of scissors, several rolls of boxing tape and Scotch tape, and two large tulles of streamer paper, one yellow, one green atop the table. I thought I heard someone say my name as I came closer. I peered about the room. I was alone.

“Rowena—” It was a light whisper and it sounded familiar.

“Is there somebody here?” I called out; my voice lightly echoed off the bookshelves and the walls. Something dark jutted out from behind the far bookshelf in front of me. My heart skipped and I hesitated right as the figure poked out his head. I recognized those blue eyes.

“Patrick?” I gasped. He slinked out from behind the bookshelf. I knew he hadn't eaten or slept in some time from the sight of his gaunt face and his bloodshot eyes. He smelled faintly of dirt, sweat, and powdered soap.

“What are you doing here? What—” I peered at his right hand, bandaged up with a wad of black electrician's tape so it looked as though he had a club for a hand. “What happened to your hand?”

“You really don't want to know,” he confessed in a broken voice. His upper lip trembled. His eyes widened in horror. Something horrible happened in that house. Something happened behind that door.

“What are you doing here,” I repeated, this time in a low voice.

“I should ask you the same,” he refracted, gesturing at the things on the table.

“I need my cap and gown,” I informed him as I began to pick up the tulles of paper, “and I offered to help set up for prom. But—I'll be back. Wait for me.”


	10. The Great Laboratory Failure

“They pulled you out of school?” I was in disbelief. After I finished set up and picked up my cap and gown, Patrick and I sat down on the top step in front of the Monterey Cafe. His stomach ached so I brought him a can of ginger ale from one of the coolers inside Harmon Gym.

“Yeah. Uncle Al began to feel paranoid. He forced Aunt Chris to withdraw me from school over Christmas. I stayed there a year. A whole year of beatings, quarrels, threats, stabbings, all manner of violence. I even got electrocuted a few times in the middle of the night.” I clasped a hand to my mouth.

“And they're completely clueless of your whereabouts now?”

“As far as I know. I avoid any prying eyes by staying in that spare back room in the library, the one nobody goes into. I nicked the keys from the janitor and set up camp in there with a sleeping bag, my pillow, a towel, and my backpack on wheels with all my clothes. I've been in there since the end of February, using the boys' bathroom and showers and eating the throwaway food the cafeteria. I always go outside when everyone's gone. Before you showed up, I was about to go to Building 6. I had already moved everything there because I knew that little room wasn't going to last.”

I peered over at the pitch black windows lining Building 6.

“But what if some classes move in there?”

“There won't be, I'm sure of that. That building was a bigger afterthought than me.”

“Things change, though. So tell me more about the night you left.”

He took a sip of his ginger ale and peered around to assure no one eavesdropped on us.

“It's okay, there's no one here,” I assured him. “It's just us.” He closed his eyes and sighed through his nose.

“I planned my escape over Christmas. After the day trip to Morro Bay, I began thinking that if I timed it right. Rowena, I thought of everything, from hitchhiking back to Sacramento to nicking a boat and sailing to Hawai'i. But if I'm starting anew, I need a safe place first. I picked a blind spot. No one looks at me anyway. When Uncle Al stabbed Aunt Chris the night before Valentine's Day and she screamed at me to take her to the hospital, I did. But when they anesthetized her, that was my chance. I snuck back to the house for my things. He went to bed, so I gathered up the bare necessities and walked here. I hid out under the bleachers around the field. It was the middle of the night and I wore all black so no one ever saw me.”

“You hid out there—”

“All day. It was cold, too. But I managed to stay out of sight behind the mounds of dirt and underneath all those metal seats until everyone went home. I told the janitor I needed to study for an exam after school and he let me into the library. I took his keys when his back was turned. I played possum until he left.”

He showed me a small smile before taking another sip of ginger ale. A pair of headlights shone behind the fence.

“There's my parents,” I pointed out, “wondering where I'm at.”

“How do you know that's them?” Patrick quizzically raised an eyebrow.

“I've seen the car enough time to recognize the headlights. See, there's my dad—” Behind the glare of the lights, I watched him lean over the driver's seat before he shut the door and strode across the grass. I returned to Patrick, who tensed up.

“What's wrong? It's just my dad. I swear to you, he's a good man. He's fighting for you and Aunt Christina.”

I turned back around right as Dad came closer.

“This is Patrick,” I introduced him. He towered over us; Patrick may as well have curled into a ball next to me.

“Oh, you're Patrick? And—what's the matter, son?”

“He's suspicious. Dad, he was living in the spare room in the library,” I truthfully told him in a low voice, “since February, and he moved into Building 6, and he was about to go over there when I found him.” Dad gaped at me.

“What do you think we should do?” I stared up at him as he nibbled on his bottom lip. He tilted his head to the side.

“I say,” he started, “we take him home with us. He needs a good home. Right now.”

“NO!” Patrick shouted; his voice startled both of us.

“No?” Dad raised an eyebrow.

“He's afraid of Alastair tracking him down and doing something to us. If he'll stay with us, we need to make it conspicuous.”

“No,” Patrick whimpered, his eyes wide with fright. “No. Please God, no.”

“Patrick, listen—” I gently coaxed him. He slowly turned his head. “Christina is his sister, which means she's my aunt, too. In other words, you're my cousin by marriage, but you're family. So we're taking you home. We'll take care of you. The law is on your side, Patrick.”

“Also, look at it this way—” Dad spoke up. Patrick and I gazed up at him as one of the outside lights on the Monterey Cafe illuminated his hair so he looked as though he had a halo. “Since you left the house in February, surely Alastair would've come to our house by now. We haven't seen him. In fact, I don't know if he's alive because I've called Christina from my office a few times before and she always says he can't answer the phone. Even though he'll be subpoenaed for failure to appear, I can't say if he's of good composure.”

“Yeah, the house looks vacant,” I pointed out. “Every time I go by there, it always looks like no one's home. Come home with us, Patrick. I don't like the thought of you staying here. Honestly, I'm surprised no one's caught you yet. So, please. Come home with us.”

I held out my hand for him. He shivered in the breeze so his breathing agitated. Reluctantly, he placed his hand into mine. We climbed to our feet in unison and the three of us trekked back across the grass towards the car where Mom awaited us in the front passenger seat with a smile. I briefly told her about everything and she gasped at hearing about Patrick in the spare room.

“We need to get your things out of there,” she insisted as Patrick and I slid into the backseat.

“My belongings are right outside the door to one of the classrooms on Building 6,” he softly pointed out, buckling his seatbelt. “I pressed my backpack, my pillow, and my sleeping bag against the door and out of sight.”

Dad jogged back onto the campus and disappeared behind the front office. He was gone for a few seconds before reappearing with a backpack, a pillow, and a sleeping bag in his arms. Mom ducked out of the passenger seat to take the sleeping bag and they loaded up the wayback together. They returned to the front and buckled their seatbelts in unison. We quickly drove back to the house; Patrick had a frightened expression on his face as we passed the house on the corner.

“It's okay,” I assured him in a soft voice. “We're almost home.”

“Dinner was nearly ready, too,” Mom recalled, “I was making fried chicken. I'd just battered it up and prepared to fry it up when we noticed 'hey, Rowena's not home. We should see if everything's okay.'”

Patrick shivered again as the peach tree entered view.

“My mom makes the best fried chicken,” I eagerly told him. “Crispy and peppery with just the right amount of salt and a twist of lemon to add some aroma. On cold days, it's nice and warm, especially with mashed potatoes and gravy.”

We parked in the driveway and Dad breathed a sigh of relief.

“Wait, we're not pulling into the garage?” Patrick sounded worried.

“Again, if he came over here by now, we'd do that,” Dad gently assured him. “I guarantee it.”

“I second that,” Mom chimed in.

“Come on—let's go inside,” I encouraged him. He swiftly unbuckled his seatbelt and we guided him into the house.

“It's okay,” I reassured him as he cautiously scanned the inside of the foyer.

“Tell you what—” Dad stepped past me to lock the dead bolt, which made a soft, reassuring _click_. He smiled at us.

“There's a guest room down the hall from my room,” I offered. “That bed is nice and comfy, and there are freshly cleaned sheets and blankets.”

“Would you like a shower before we eat?” Mom suggested. “I always feel better after a warm one. We'll wash your clothes, too.”

I showed him the bathroom and how to work the shower before giving him a clean towel. Dad let him borrow one of his old plush robes. Once he was comfortable in the bathroom, I returned to my room to change into my pajamas, then I helped set the table. Soon, Patrick walked in with shiny dark brown hair and pallid but clean skin; his eyes, while still a bit pink, had cleared up. Mom's face lit up as she set the fried chicken on the metal rack next to the stove for cooling.

“Oh, you look so much better!” she remarked.

“I feel better,” he confessed, taking the chair next to my seat. He was quick to wolf down his mashed potatoes and his green beans, followed by his two pieces of chicken. Dad whispered something into Mom's ear and she nodded. He leaned over to me to whisper: “Poor thing's starving to death.”

“So, Rowena,” Mom started as she scooped up a spoonful of potatoes, “do you know what you're wearing for graduation?”

“I think that red wine colored dress,” I answered as I picked up a chicken thigh. “You know, the one with the polka dots.”

“You're—You're graduating?” Patrick stammered.

“Yeah—” I froze. I remembered he had been withdrawn from school.

“You can join us if you'd like,” Dad kindly offered.

“I'd love to,” he accepted with a small smile.

He stayed with us for the next few weeks and I told Ivan and Vincent he was my cousin from down south to stay with us for some time. I later told Patrick about them, how they were two of the best friends I ever had. He often kept Mom company, watched _Seinfeld_ , or read some of our books. When she took breaks from writing, she taught Patrick how to cook, do laundry, and tend to the plants.

Two days before graduation, he helped her trim the hedges after breakfast. I slept fitfully the night before so I took a nap on the couch, falling asleep to their conversing to one another.

“Be careful with those hedge clippers, Patrick—they're really sharp—” I heard her advise him through the living room window. I was about to doze off when Mom changed her tone.

“Why, hello Ivan! What's—” I sighed through my nose. There was a brief pause, followed by her gasping.

“Oh my God, Ivan, I'm so sorry! Come here, sweetheart—” I opened my eyes. I had a bad feeling.

“Rowena!” The break in his voice tipped me off. I scrambled off the couch to the open door right as the three of them trudged towards the house. Mom kept her arm around Ivan as she opened the screen door.

“What happened?” I demanded. His eyes were bright red from crying. A tear streamed down his face when he saw me.

“…my dad died.”

I clasped my hands to my mouth. I had just spoken to Commodore Wilson. He was just here. I flung my arms around Ivan's waist and buried my face in his chest. I began crying myself. I felt him raise a hand.

“I came over here—as quickly as I could,” he explained in a hoarse voice. “He just—went to sleep and—never woke up. Mom called Dr. Dutch and—” He sniffled. “—he thinks Dad may have had—undiagnosed heart failure. The coroner will tell us—for sure. He—went into cardiac arrest—while he was—sleeping.”

I closed my eyes. Mom embraced both of us from our left; I felt Patrick on our right.

“How's your mother doing?” Mom asked Ivan, gently massaging his back. “How's Elka?”

He sniffled and brushed away another tear. “Shattered. Worse than me. She—wanted me to tell you, though.”

I remembered that Nurse Basil dream within a dream; his “spare goes first” still haunted me. I refused to see Commodore Wilson that way but his voice still rang through my mind. One thing was for certain I could care less about graduation now.

I dressed in the red wine colored dress, along with my black velvet high heels and my Red Hot Chili Peppers asterisk pendant, accompanied with a touch of mahogany lipstick; Dad tucked a red rose tucked behind my ear. The five of us piled into the car and drove to the football field: I held my yellow mortarboard and gown neatly folded in my lap the whole way.

Walking across the parking lot towards the gate felt like a dream. That was the last time I would be there.

I spotted Ivan and Mrs. Sorenson-Wilson striding towards us. He wore the coat with the British and Norwegian flags on the sleeve over a black shirt and matching trousers; he pinned a sprig of tiny light purple flowers to his lapel. He carried a gray and black striped urn under his right arm and a bag of what resembled glittering white cotton balls in his left hand. She sported a black floral lace dress with a billowy skirt with little white bows down the sides and a black floppy sun hat with a silver ribbon around the crown. I showed them a small but comforting smile.

“Hi, Ivan,” I greeted him. He still managed to hug me despite his hands being full.

“Thank you for coming,” my voice muffled was in his chest. I stepped back to gaze into his eyes; he showed me a small smile.

“What kind of flower is that?” I pointed at the sprig pinned to his label.

“Purple heather,” he answered in a low voice. “It grows in Britain, but I'm wearing it to honor Dad.”

I noticed the urn tucked under his arm.

“He's in there,” he lowered his voice to a near whisper.

“We already had him cremated,” Mrs. Sorenson-Wilson explained. “After the ceremony, we're going to the Santa Lucia Mountains to spread his ashes.” I embraced her and rested my chin on her shoulder: she smelled like that spicy smell associated with Christmas.

“Thank you for coming, Mrs. Sorenson,” I whispered in her ear.

“Of course, darling,” she whispered back. She stood back and lightly touched the rose behind my ear. “I like this. I like this little touch here—it fits you well—”

“What you got there?” I heard Aunt Indigo ask Ivan.

“Hernandez Horchata Sugar Plums,” he answered. I watched him show her the bag of sparkly white balls. “They're so good. Would you like a couple, Aunt Indigo? They're not as sweet as you think.”

“Alright!” I heard Miss Black bellow from the gate of the football field. “Grads to Harmon Gym for a head count and put on your gowns!”

Mrs. Sorenson-Wilson straightened up my dress with a smile. “Looking glamorous… alright, darling…”

Mom and Dad gave me the biggest hugs. “We'll be waiting for you,” he whispered in my ear. “We're so proud of you, honey.”

“My little girl, leaving high school—” Mom had a break in her voice. Aunt Indigo hugged me harder than ever before. I gently embraced Patrick, who still smelled good from his shower the night before. Ivan handed me two sugar plums before I lay my head against his chest again. I sprinted to the gym to put on my gown and my mortarboard.

I pressed myself against the wall and popped one of the sugar plums into my mouth. It was milky and soft, like a bead of heavy cream dusted with sugar. I tasted a kiss of cinnamon and rice, exactly like a glass of horchata. I popped in the other one before pulling the gown over my body and then the mortarboard onto my head, careful so as to not knock out the rose. Two days before, I crafted a glittery red galloping billy goat from construction paper for the top of the mortarboard to break the monotony of the crowd.

I began to miss Harmon Gym already. That hard wooden floor that was so hard on the feet and the back, those basketball hoops all over the place, and those hideous dark green bleachers which took two people to drag out for assemblies.

Within time, we took our seats in white folding chairs on the grass before a fold out stage. Tall speakers on either side blasted Principal Hatchett and Mrs. Dutch's voices out over the field. Our valedictorian Gina Martin, Mrs. Martin's daughter, finished her speech with the quip: “Here's to life. May we eat, drink, and be merry until we can do no more.”

The sun had set and the lights of the football field bathed us with bright white light by the time Principal Hatchett began calling out the names on my row. I sauntered onto the stage for my diploma and handshakes from her and Mrs. Dutch, and then have our picture taken by a photographer from the county newspaper.

My parents, Aunt Indigo, Ivan, Mrs. Sorenson-Wilson, and Patrick all cheered for me in the third row up from the ground. Next to Patrick were the St. Vituses, including Grandma Slate who let out a loud whistle as I strode towards Principal Hatchett. I kindly shook her hand as she handed me the diploma, beaming.

“I'm going to miss you, Miss Patterson,” she told me in a low voice.

“I'm going to miss you, Principal Hatchett,” I echoed as the photographer took our picture. I returned to my seat until everyone else received their diplomas and she gave closing words before setting us free. Everyone except myself and a couple of others who decorated their mortarboards chucked their caps into the air. We dispersed across the field to meet up with our families: Mom and Dad embraced me first. Mrs. St. Vitus handed me a bouquet of white and red roses and a hug as well.

“Ivan, darling—” I heard Mrs. Sorenson-Wilson call out. He turned to us.

“You all can join us if you'd like,” he offered. “We're just going to the Santa Lucias to scatter Dad's ashes, then go to dinner.”

“I don't see why not,” Dad suggested. “Nick was a friend to us all. We may as well pay our respects.”

“Yeah, we'll come with, too,” Mrs. St. Vitus chimed in. “Vincent and I actually made a little cross for Commodore.”

“Where are we going exactly?” Mr. St. Vitus wondered aloud.

“Nacimiento,” Ivan answered, turning to me. “We've been by there, haven't we?”

“We have! It's about an hour down the road.”

“Oh yeah, we know exactly where that is,” Dad added. “It's set back from the road so we'll have to keep an eye out for it. We better hustle, too. The winds will pick up soon and I don't want us there too long because it's so dark.”

The headlights of the car shone over the dark pavement as we left the village of Lucia. Steep hills bowed inside themselves as they lined the side of the highway. On our other side, the pitch black ocean stretched back into the moonless darkness. The headlights from Ivan and Mrs. Sorenson-Wilson's boxy charcoal gray sedan shone onto our heads; the St. Vituses' sturdy black pick up truck followed behind them. Dad leaned over the steering wheel in search of that brown road sign next to a scraggly fir tree.

“It's right before the campground, if I remember correctly…” he muttered as we crossed the bridge at Kirk Creek.

“Ah! There it is!” Mom pointed. He clicked the left turn signal and we slowed to turn onto Nacimiento Road which climbed uphill like a long black serpent twisting into the ponderosa pine forest. The two pairs of headlights closely followed us all the while.

My ears popped from the elevation change as we dipped behind a ridge. Despite the total darkness, I made out the outlines of the full, lush Douglas firs and ponderosa pines blanketing the hillsides. I cranked down the window to catch a whiff of that fresh tree smell amongst the cool salty night air. The car behind us flashed their lights as a turn off on the right side of the road came ahead.

“Okay—” Dad murmured. We pulled over into the turn off lined by a guard rail. Ivan and Mrs. Sorenson-Wilson's car parked behind us, followed by the St. Vituses' truck. I rolled up the window to keep the cloud of dust from billowing into the car. We all switched off the headlights, which left the spot in total darkness. Mrs. Sorenson-Wilson said something, followed by Mr. St. Vitus. I wondered what they were doing when two glimmers of light floated outside the back window. I rolled down the window as Ivan approached the car with a white candle in his hands. The flickering yellow light softly reflected onto his face and his neck.

“Come on out,” he coaxed us in a low voice. We climbed out into the cool night. A light oceanic breeze blew through the canyon and sent a shiver down my spine. Past the guard rail was a steep drop into total darkness.

“Here, Rowena—” Ivan handed me his candle so he could bring the urn out from underneath his arm. Mrs. Sorenson-Wilson, who held the second candle, and the St. Vituses stepped forward.

“Bob, do you have the cross ready?” she asked Mr. St. Vitus. He knelt down before the guard rail and erected something. He stood back up for us to see the small white cross, about the size of a loaf of ciabatta bread, bearing a calavera with black eyes, nose, and teeth, lined with bright blue and pink spots and flowers, and a little black scorpion painted on the crown on the intersection of the tiers. In the candlelight, I read black letters painted on the horizontal tier in neat penmanship: **Nicholas Wilson, in memoriam**. Mrs. St. Vitus, Vincent, and Grandma Slate lay down sprigs of tiny white flowers in front of the cross.

“Go ahead, Elka,” Mr. St. Vitus encouraged her as we congregated around the cross: Ivan held the urn in front of his stomach and lay his head on her shoulder.

“Nicholas Richard Wilson, better known as Commodore Wilson and simply Nick, was born on January 26, 1926 in Truro, Cornwall, England. He was a pilot for the Royal Air Force, participating in the liberation of Normandy in World War II. I met Nick in 1949 when I moved to England and my parents told me the United Kingdom was the place to be: he was twenty-three and I was still seventeen. He came into the restaurant I worked in and ordered cherry pie with a dollop of vanilla ice cream, his favorite food. We became best friends. A year later, we moved to Canada and lived there for thirteen years. At one point, he asked me to be his girlfriend. We came here to the United States in 1963, got our green cards and moved to the desert in northern Nevada which we felt was isolated enough to where our children would be nonplussed by people in the city. We married in 1970. When I told him I was expecting with Ivan, we were both shocked because he was fifty-one and I was forty-seven. The doctors kept telling us it wasn't impossible for a woman of that age to have a child, the odds were against us. That's why we named him Ivan.”

She lightly kissed the top of his head. “Nick was the love of my life and my best friend. He was more than a national hero to Ivan.”

“It's because of my dad I'm so comfortable with myself,” he declared in a soft voice. Mrs. Sorenson-Wilson sniffled.

“I had no idea he had heart failure. He was so healthy and full of life. My lover, my pilot to the stars is gone. Ivan, darling—” She brushed away a tear and let him go. “—do the honors.”

He beheld the urn above the guard rail. He removed the lid and raised it to the starry sky.

“Farewell, Dad. _Wir sehen uns auf der anderen Seite_.”

He thrust the urn forward and a massive cloud of ash billowed into the gaping chasm behind the guard rail. Commodore Wilson's ashes drifted away from us on the breeze before dissipating and becoming part of the earth. Ivan returned to us right as Vincent embraced him. I handed the candle to Mom so I could join them.

“Come on, all,” Mrs. Sorenson-Wilson concluded. “Let's get something to eat. I just don't know where to go, though.”

“We could go to that seafood restaurant in Seaside we went to after Aunt Indigo published her book,” I suggested.

“Oh, that place!” Dad recalled. “Once again, we'll show the way there.”

She and Mom blew out the candles before we piled back into the cars. We lead the way back downhill to the highway and then drove to the seafood restaurant, now low lit for the evening. Dad parked in the spot before the front door, in between the Wilsons' car and the St. Vituses' truck.

A tall black man awaited next to the front door with a grave expression on his face. His hair was a thick, nappy mop with thin silver streaks above either of his temples. He wore a hunter green jacket with a silver chain linked from his trouser pocket to the inside of his jacket.

“Dr. Dutch!” I exclaimed. Dad climbed out first to greet him.

“I was hoping you'd come here,” I heard him say.

“…did something happen?” Dad sounded concerned.

“I'm afraid so. Your older sister, Christina, has suffered a massive stroke. She's alive but she's in the hospital. Come, I'll expand once we're inside.”


	11. Inside the House on the Corner

“I can't believe it.” Dad leaned over the table with his face buried in his hands; Aunt Indigo held him tight. The five of us took our seats in between the St. Vituses and the Wilsons in the middle of the room. Luckily, we were the only ones in the restaurant.

Dr. Dutch told the waiter what happened, who then gravely nodded in affirmation; he borrowed the chair next to Ivan and sat in between Mom and me. He showed me a small smile.

“Why, hello, Rowena. Congratulations on graduation. I was going to be there with Jeannine but Nurse Basil called me in. I wish we weren't seeing each other again this way.”

“I know, right?”

Dad rubbed his eyes and let out a long low sigh. Aunt Indigo brushed away a tear.

“Dr. Dutch, I know I'm speaking for all of us here,” he started, his voice breaking, “but… what happened?”

“That's what's baffling me,” he explained with a sigh, “no one knows. She's sustained several injuries, some have healed over into scars, whereas others have not. But we ruled out the possibility of a clot in her brain. She doesn't have a family history of stroke as far as I can tell. She listed her siblings as her closest contacts. I will say we detected an inordinate amount of minerals in her blood. Her blood was a far darker shade of red than normal, almost black. Absolutely saturated. But I'm waiting to hear from the toxicologist for a full report.”

“Wait a minute—” Vincent held up his hand to quiet his parents. “What was that last thing you said?”

“I'm waiting to hear from the toxicologist for a full report,” Dr. Dutch duly replied.

“Before that.”

“Her blood was a darker shade of red than normal, almost black. Absolutely saturated.”

“Before that.”

“We detected an inordinate amount of minerals in her blood.” Vincent gaped at him.

“I'm so lost right now,” I confessed. He excitedly patted Aunt Indigo on the shoulder.

“Aunt Indigo, do you think Christina was poisoned with Fall of Saturn? It does cause stroke.”

“Vincent—” She hesitated and nibbled her bottom lip. We were forbidden to speak about Alastair and the case. “Vincent, Fall of Saturn is kept under lock and key. It's lead and iron based, so it'd be lethal to anyone.”

“Fall of Saturn?” Dr. Dutch raised an eyebrow. “What in God's name is that?”

Aunt Indigo leaned forward. She folded her hands together atop the table in preparation of explanation.

“Dr. Dutch, I'm an alchemist by trade. I've been all over the world, studying flora and fauna in the wake of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I've scouted out natural elixirs and remedies to all a manner of diseases, from the common cold to tumors. I've even found natural remedies for everything from paper cuts to mortal wounds. I promise you had we known about Nick Wilson's heart failure, I would've whipped something up to save him. I've written them all down in my book _New Age Alchemy_ beginning in the year proceeding the Chernobyl accident.”

“Medieval chemistry revamped and modernized? Fascinating,” he remarked. “Dangerous, too. Excuse me, go on.”

“I've discovered four elixirs with dual bases, or 'cardinal' elixirs as I call them because they correspond to the four cardinal directions on a medicine wheel, and to a lesser extent, a compass. For example, Exaltation of Saturn corresponds to cardinal east and the color yellow—it's also the only one of the four that tickles the olfactory senses with its lemon smell. Fall of Saturn corresponds to cardinal west and the color black. It has a dual base of lead and iron and has herbs such as belladonna and whole nutmeg. Highly lethal and brings on a very slow, painful death manifesting as flulike symptoms, and then the symptoms of lead poisoning, then organ failure, be it of the heart, liver, kidneys, or a stroke.”

“Well, we'll have to await for the full report. It will say if there's lead and iron in her blood. Just out of curiosity, Indigo—” The whole room fell quiet, listening in awe at this conversation. “—is there an antidote?”

The waiter returned to our table, placing a glass of ice water down in front of each of us. I thanked him as I took a sip. Aunt Indigo leaned back in her chair and blankly stared at the glass before she spoke up again.

“Yes. There are two. One is the venom from a very specific, highly rare species of honeybee. The other is the venom from a fattail scorpion not native to the United States.”

“But those are the antidotes,” he noted.

“Yes.”

He winced as he took a drink of water. I pictured the lead and the iron eating away at Aunt Christina's body from the inside before bubbling into her brain. Something told me she was going to die because of the specifications of the antidotes. We ate our dinner together in uncomfortable silence and drove home. Once we walked through our front door, Dad collapsed onto the couch. Mom plumped down next to him to hold him.

“I just don't know, Hope,” he confessed. “I just… I just don't know. This makes no sense.”

Aunt Indigo handed me Mrs. St. Vitus' bouquet and leaned against the wall behind Dad's armchair. Patrick and I stood next to her in disbelief. I graduated high school, attended a memorial, and received news my other aunt suffered a stroke and Vincent suspected poison all in a matter of few hours. I was speechless.

“I've got it!” Mom suddenly spoke. Aunt Indigo's face lit up.

“What is it?”

“We could search for Fall of Saturn in the house. Surely, it has to be there.”

“How will we get into the house, though?” Dad was grim.

“And Fall of Saturn's liquid,” Aunt Indigo added. “So even if we could get in, we'd have to look around for a container.”

“Do you know what the containers look like?” I asked her.

“Just regular medicine bottles. Think—bottles for cough syrup.”

The phone rang. Mom lunged for the phone on the table next to the armchair.

“Hello? This is Mrs. Patterson, my husband can't come to the phone right now—”

“A white cap on top. That's exactly what they look like,” Aunt Indigo confirmed. “At least, when I discovered it. Sometimes Tupperware containers, too. Because of the lead, it can be used to protect against gamma rays so it'll be put into containers for rad waste—”

“Alastair got arrested,” Mom interrupted.

“Oh, thank God!” Dad exclaimed. She shot up a finger to keep him silent.

“—okay—” she continued. Her eyes darted back and forth as the person on the phone continued. She gazed up at Patrick.

“How old are you, Patrick?” her voice was hushed.

“I'm sixteen,” he answered in a low voice. “Seventeen in a couple of months.”

Mom nodded in response. “Yes, he's sixteen—yes—I don't know—do you drive?”

He shook his head. “No, he doesn't drive—”

Dad slowly sat upright, his eyes wide with fear as Mom peered back him. The pinkish color in his face drained away to the color of old drywall. She brought a hand to her mouth.

“—yes—okay—okay, thank you.” She hung up the phone and closed her eyes.

“Is—he going to be okay?” I stammered.

“Yes,” she quietly replied. “However—he's going to be flown up to Sacramento tomorrow morning. He'll be checked into a halfway house where he'll live until he's twenty one, or until we can prove that we're able to care for him.” At least he was away from Alastair, but the disappointment was obvious on his face.

“So—the house is empty?” Dad followed along.

“Yes. The official said, since we've taken legal action, the police have a warrant to enter the house, which means we probably can, too. We'll be able to search for anything… dangerous. That house was built in 1972, but she advised going inside in haz-mat suits.” Aunt Indigo turned to me, her eyes gleaming.

“No—” I insisted as I put my arm around Patrick.

“Rowena, you've been to that house more times than we have.”

“Indigo!” Dad exclaimed, appalled.

“Yes, _to_ it,” I pointed out. “But not in it.”

“We're allowed in,” she devilishly continued. “I'll go with you.”

“ _Indigo!_ ” Mom barked. Her eyes continued to gleam at the suggestion.

“Hope, Matt, listen to me. I've been to sites in the former Soviet Union where they told me I needed a radiation suit. I went to Bikini Atoll before the testing and a decade afterwards to draw comparisons between the equatorial sands and coconuts surrounding the site of Castle Bravo. I've stood inside the outer casing of a nuclear bomb. I've been to Los Alamos to study the dirt and the plants. Christina has—or had, who knows if she still has it—a picture of me holding jars of Ebola virus and small pox. I've looked at cancer cells under microscope, before and after they've had Indian turmeric scattered on them. I own meteorites and dirt samples: I even have a piece of dirt from the demilitarized zone between South and North Korea. I've dealt with chemicals more acidic than our stomachs and chemicals so alkaline, I had to wear a full suit with a respirator and vigorously shower off afterwards from the corrosive fumes. I've studied scorpion venom since I found one in my boot when I went to Australia. I've experienced extreme cold and heat, seen the most beautiful places and the most desolate. I've seen the effects of two mushroom clouds, even now, fifty years later, in everything from drinking water to the air we breathe to artwork. I am two steps from turning lead into gold and curing all disease. I am biohazard personified. If Rowena, my only niece, wants to not just become a nurse but a good nurse, she needs to do field work. Put on those pajamas and delve into an environment like that. It's better now when she's out of school and I'm here. I'm a scientist: I don't go more than twenty feet without my gloves, my star charts, my mortar and pestle, and my Geiger counter. I'll be by her side with a meter in case there's black mold. I don't think there is because Dr. Dutch would've noted that, but I'd rather be safe. Please—trust me on this.”

Mom and Dad stared at each other before turning to me.

“It can be arranged,” he started, “and you both can be cleared, but Rowena needs to confirm it for herself.”

The memory of Alastair beating Patrick and stabbing Christina continued to haunt me. What might be in the house was an unknown, too. On the other hand, the house was vacant. I trusted Aunt Indigo, too, and Aunt Christina could die. I wanted to help.

“I'll do it. I'll go into the house.”

“Okay,” Dad concluded, breathing a heavy sigh of relief. “I'll call in tomorrow—can't do it now, it's getting late—but I'll see if I can fit you in in the next couple of days. Patrick, we'll take you to the airport tomorrow. We'll fight for you, though. I promise.”

Mom rounded the armchair to hug me with tears in her eyes.

“You've got this,” she whispered into my ear. “I trust Indigo to the grave. You've got this.”

“Here, let me help—” Aunt Indigo offered after she pulled the hood over her head. I could scarcely zip up the pure white haz-mat suit; my hands trembled from nerves. Combined with the blue latex gloves and the big boots the police gave me, it felt as though I wrapped myself up into a sterile, plain cocoon. She seemed concerned as she zipped up my suit.

“Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” I breathed. “I'm just—nervous.”

She snickered. “That's okay. Happened to me, too, particularly when I visited Tashkent. But luckily, there aren't any Soviet soldiers here glaring at you and your translator like you're up to something nefarious and—keep this on—” She handed me a black respirator with a glass protective mask.

“—and I'll keep my eyes peeled and I'll have this—” She showed me an instrument with a white gauge dotted with little black lines inside and a fiery red section on one side, and a black needle pointing at zero on the far side of the white part. “—in case there's anything that might cause respiratory distress.”

“Ladies—” one of the police officers gestured for us. Aunt Indigo peered over at her.

“Come on. I'm right behind you.”

I held the respirator in my hands as two officers lifted the stripe of police tape to let us onto the yard. We paused before the front door so we could put on the respirators. I sighed through the air filter, which faintly smelled of new plastic. I climbed onto the front porch and opened the decrepit door to the front of the house.

Someone covered the entire hard wood floor in musty old newspapers. A blank wall the color of old pea soup dotted with tiny red flecks ran towards two doorways adjacent to each other: the one in front of me led to the dining room and the kitchen. I realized those flecks were blood. The cramped living room next to me had a rickety old white leather armchair, the spindly chair Aunt Christina sat in on that first night, a side table bearing a lamp with a plain faded lampshade, and a beat up old couch pressed against the far wall. There was no television but the black curtain over the wide window behind us. I lunged for the hallway when Aunt Indigo stopped me in my tracks.

“Rowena, look at the ceiling!” I peered up and gasped at the hundreds of holes perforating the ceiling; some were small like bullet holes, whereas others were thin slits, like someone hurled knives into the ceiling.

“Mother of God,” I breathed out, my voice muffled by the respirator.

“I know. I—” Aunt Indigo closed her eyes and bit her bottom lip. She fumed.

“—I'm angry at that. My kid sister lives here. She lives in this—this—this _place!_ ” She glanced back at the meter. “The meter shows we're doing fine. Just dust, probably from these newspapers. I'm surprised Patrick doesn't have asthma.”

She stooped down to read the date on one of the papers. “Jesus, some of these are from before you were born, Rowena. You're walking over Khrushchev's face right now.”

I glimpsed into the dining room and the rickety wooden table in the middle of the floor with two spindly chairs, one against the perpendicular wall beholding an ivory white telephone, and the other tipped onto the floor. No pictures decorated the beige walls and a single light bulb hung down from the tattered ceiling. On the far wall was an empty telephone jack.

“The phone's off the hook,” I pointed out. We cautiously continued down the hallway where a door on the right stood wide open beneath a round white smoke detector. I recognized the back window above the bare mattress on a spindly black metal bed frame inside a room of barren beige walls. The solid stone floor was covered with a few newspapers. The room looked like a prison.

“Is this Patrick's room?” Aunt Indigo held up the meter to the ceiling.

“Yeah. That's the window where I saw it happening. This makes me want to cry.”

I turned to the tiny dark dingy bathroom behind us and stood in the doorway. Newspapers covered the floor in layers. A dense black line of grime caked the inside of the basin of the partially collapsed sink, which jutted out from beneath the broken mirror on the medicine cabinet door. Opposite the sink was an otherwise white toilet with a brown, filthy bowl. The narrow bathtub before me had a line of grime along the inside of the basin, a curtain rod with no curtain, and a stubby shower head caked with lime scum.

“I'm glad we're wearing these suits.” The needle in the meter moved close to the red zone. “I didn't bring my Petri dishes.”

“I was going to say, you'd have a field day in here. What a mess.”

“No mold but to say this room needs cleaning is an understatement. God, I can't believe Christina was living here.”

We continued down the hall to the master bedroom, barren and covered in newspapers, exactly like Patrick's room but with a bigger bed, two tiny high windows, and a shabby wooden nightstand with a tiny lamp with the cord loosely twined around the base and a blank, faded red plastic cough syrup bottle with a white cap.

“There!” I pointed at the bottle. Aunt Indigo strode to the nightstand and picked up the bottle with her free hand. She held it up to the gray light filtering into the tiny windows. Small inky black specks lined the inside of the bottle.

“Solid black like the incoming night. Looks like he used it all up. Good eyes, Rowena. Let's show this to Matt and the police. Report or not, that scum bucket doesn't have a prayer.”


	12. The Bridge Between Two Worlds

Since we found the bottle of Fall of Saturn and thus confirmed Vincent's theory, we took to court within the week. It was clear Alastair was going to prison, but the court needed to hear from Aunt Indigo, Patrick, Dr. Dutch, and since he cared for Aunt Christina, Nurse Basil on the witness stand. Dad suggested I use Mom's maiden name Manzarek when in public and with Ivan and Vincent to keep the Patterson name confidential and using that name felt safer should Alastair come for me.

We parked next to the side door to the pale gray brick courthouse. The tension was heavy, particularly upon Dad.

“Just another day at the office,” Mom declared, laying a hand on his thigh.

“Just another day at the office,” he echoed.

Mom and Dad held hands and led Aunt Indigo and me to the glass front doors. Alastair stood there, chained and handcuffed, wearing a bright orange jumpsuit, next to a police officer at the curb. He had a deep red scratch on the right side of his neck and a black eye. He spat on the ground before Dad's feet. Mom leapt back in surprise. Aunt Indigo yanked me closer to her.

“How'd I know you were going to do that, you sack of shit?” Dad barked.

“Go to hell,” he growled, sneering at us.

“I'll see you there,” Dad retorted. Alastair glowered at me; those eyes seared into me like hot flames. He resembled a caged carnivorous animal, one that wanted to eat me alive.

“That is if your daughter comes with you.”

“I will set you on fire!” Mom shouted.

“Esquire!”

The bailiff and another lawyer gestured for us to come inside the courthouse. Dad guided us into the brightly lit lobby and closed the doors behind us. The bailiff, a handsome Asian man in a black uniform with slicked back black hair and pockmarked skin, guarded us to the big wooden doors to the courtroom, while the other attorney, a tall brunet gentleman with little silver cowlicks over his temples in a midnight blue suit and a plaid tie, struggled to organize himself.

“Tim Marsh, right?” Mom gestured to the other lawyer.

“Yes, ma'am. All the way from Redding. I'm representing Patrick Ulysses Ravens.”

Two police officers led Alastair to the other door. Dad raised his hand for them to stop him in his place. He loomed in front of Alastair's face, trying to obscure his view of me.

“I swear,” Dad threatened in a low voice, “if, for one second, you even think of coming near my sisters, my wife, or my daughter, I will make sure you get it handed to you in prison so swiftly, you'll wish you had a goldfish's memory.”

We stepped inside the bright, cold courtroom with black and pale gray stone walls illuminated by ten overhead lights bathing the twenty rows of hard wooden benches in soft white light. Two big wooden tables stood before the judge's podium and the witness stand.

The bailiff disappeared through a side door around the witness stand. Dad and Mr. Marsh took their seats at the table on the right; Mom, Aunt Indigo, and I were right behind them. They quietly chatted about something as Alastair and the public defender planted themselves in the chairs on the left. The chains clinked and grinded all the while. We waited a few minutes until the bailiff returned with a beige folder in hand.

“All rise for Judge Jonathan Ferreira,” he announced. Everyone in the room stood up as a short slender man in a long black robe entered through the side door. He had flyaway salt and pepper hair, olive skin, and thoughtful brown eyes. He put on wiry glasses before taking his seat. The bailiff handed him the folder.

“Thank you, Michael,” Judge Ferreira said in a scratchy voice, opening the folder. He nodded his head the whole way through the papers until his eyes shot open at one point. He plunked down the open folder.

“Wow. We have Matthew Bernard Patterson, Esquire, representing Christina Joanne Ravens and Counselor Timothy Willard Marsh, representing Patrick Ulysses Ravens, for the plaintiffs. The first witness the counsel would like to hear from is medical nurse, Theodore Basil.”

Judge Ferreira peered about the courtroom. I glanced around with him. Mr. Marsh said something to Dad, who then shrugged.

“Theodore Basil?” Michael the bailiff called out. Murmurs emerged from behind us. My heart sank.

“Christina's not here,” she noted in a low voice, “neither is Dr. Dutch.”

“Alright, that's enough,” Judge Ferreira called out as he picked a piece of paper from the folder.

“This says Christina Ravens is in the intensive care unit and Theo Basil is at her care. Emmett Dutch isn't here, either. There's no way we can do this now.”

“I've got a bad feeling about this,” I heard Dad mutter.

“We have to reschedule to next month, or at least until Mrs. Ravens is of better health,” Judge Ferreira concluded. “Esquire—” He removed his glasses. “I don't say this to counselors but… stay strong. My sister dealt with serious illness most of her life and it ended up killing her, so I know what it's like to have a deathly ill sibling.” He lightly banged his gavel, thus releasing us for the time being.

“I hope nothing horrible happened to Aunt Christina,” I confessed as we turned onto Monroe.

“I hope so, too, honey,” Dad agreed.

“Me, too,” Aunt Indigo chimed in. We stopped at the corner of Hellam and then continued onward. I recoiled every time I mentally replayed Alastair's dirty look at me.

“Hey, there's Ivan,” Mom pointed out. I peered out the windshield at him hunching over the front step: he smiled when we parked in the driveway and climbed out.

“Hey, buddy,” Dad greeted as they embraced each other.

“Have you been waiting here long?” Mom curiously asked him as she put her arms around him.

“Nah, like ten minutes or so,” he answered before turning to me.

“Hi.”

“Hi,” he echoed. “I mainly came here to just get out of the house. Vincent also has summer school.”

“He has summer school?” I was stunned. Vincent was so intelligent; I never thought he needed to retake a class.

“Yeah, he's taking biology over the summer so he can take AP biology next year. I guess he signed up for it just a couple of weeks ago and never told anyone about it because he was so busy.”

“Wow!” Aunt Indigo exclaimed. “Mr. St. Vitus is ambitious!”

“Yeah, he wants to be a doctor and a scientist like his heroine,” he told her; she beamed as we entered the house.

“And what would you like to be?” she asked him.

“I'm not sure,” he admitted with a shrug, “probably something in the arts. I've always loved art, especially drawing. I don't care if it lands me a good job or not.”

“Oregon is a mecca for artisans,” she eagerly explained, “especially the Coast. There are towns all along the coast with little art glass shops and galleries. Portland has little communes of people from almost every field of art you can think of. Seattle does, too, but it's more so the case there. You should travel there some time, Ivan.”

“I don't drive yet, though,” he admitted, “and I don't think Mom's willing to go anywhere right now.”

“I'll take you there,” I offered and he blushed.

“Would—Would you do that?”

“Oh, yeah. Besides, I like travelling with you, Ivan. You're fun to be with. But I don't think we'd want to go now, though.”

“Yeah, it's horrific in the summer,” Aunt Indigo agreed, “it's worse than here. The rains come in around October and there are plenty of campgrounds up there on the beach. There's something lovely about falling asleep to the sound of the tides.”

“I'm getting a job over the summer, probably at one of the bakeries on Cannery Row or at the library,” I continued, “I can put away money. But that means you'd be alone a lot, though.”

“Actually,” Ivan began, nibbling on his bottom lip, “I'd rather be alone than see one of my best friends having a boring summer. Before Dad died, I bought a couple of sketchbooks for the summer. It's helped me on nights when I couldn't sleep.”

“Ivan, I probably know the answer to this, but would you like some lunch?” Mom offered as she took out her earrings.

“You know I would,” he took up the offer with a shy smile.

I landed an assistant job at the library on Pacific Street within a couple of weeks, working part time from noon to two. I wanted to work on my poetry and writing over the summer so Mom convinced me to take enough time in case of inspiration. Ivan and I planned our trip to Gold Beach, Oregon over Thanksgiving, leaving on Thursday morning and taking the 101, which would take all day. We'd have dinner that night and return home Saturday.

The day before Father's Day, I saw Vincent, Mrs. St. Vitus, and Grandma Slate at the farmer's market: his face slimmed down a bit and he wore a snug black shirt buttoned up to the top of his chest.

“You've lost weight,” I complimented. “You look great!”

“Eh, just a little,” he coyly brushed off, “like ten pounds, just so my back and hips don't hurt as much. There were a few mornings I'd get up and it felt like someone punched me in the spine.”

“His clothes fit him a bit better, too,” Mrs. St. Vitus chimed in as she reached for two cans of black beans. “He can put on his jeans with a little muffin top.”

“I can put my arms around him better now,” Grandma Slate hugged him around the waist; Vincent playfully rolled his eyes.

“Not that much better. The buttons on my shirt still feel like they're going to fly off any second.”

I never discussed it but I thought of inviting Vincent on the trip to Oregon.

“Ivan and I are taking a road trip over Thanksgiving. We're going to Gold Beach on the Oregon Coast. If you'd like, and if Mrs. St. Vitus allows it, you can come with us.”

“Over Thanksgiving, you said?” Mrs. St. Vitus knitted her eyebrows together.

“Yeah. We're leaving on Thanksgiving Day and it's going to take all day but we're camping and having dinner on the beach.”

“I don't see why not. It's ways away, too, so we've got plenty time to plan ahead.”

“I got a job at the library so I'm putting away money specifically for this trip.”

“Oh, good thinking!” she remarked, picking a can of chick peas off the shelf. Vincent's expression turned serious.

“How's he doing, by the way? I haven't seen him since last week.”

“He's doing okay,” I answered. “He's been making art. I think all he can do right now is just be with his mom. I have no doubt Sunday's going to suck for him.”

“My dad just left today for the Central Valley and he's not coming back 'til Tuesday. He won't be around then. Still—”

“I wish we could do something,” I confessed, “but I don't know what.”

“I think the only thing we can do is just—let him live it out,” he suggested. “I think that'd be best.” Mrs. St. Vitus gestured for him to follow her and Grandma Slate to the next aisle.

“We'll see you later, okay?” he hugged me one more time.

“Of course. When I see Ivan, I'll give him a hug for you.”


	13. The Oregon Coast

I raised my head above the murky swamp waters. Tall, hollowed out, uprooted trees towered over either side of me as I searched for dry land. I blinked several times to rid my eyes of the muddy water. I peeled a vine off of my head as I paddled past a handful of trees; the root of one of which beheld a sprawled out black mishapen figure. I shot my arms out to thrust myself forward to take a closer look.

The man's legs dangled into the water. Sticky, muddy vines shroud his eyes, nose, and half of his mouth, while revealing the deathly pale, washed out skin on his lower jaw. He had several deep festering wounds on his neck, including one over his juggular vein. The skin on his arm withered and fell off in putrid chunks to reveal the grayish green bone beneath: his body shuddered from blood loss.

My eyes watered from the rank odor of his wounds. I had no doubt it could drive me to madness. He had a massive gaping hole on his chest over his heart. Spidery, vinelike bloodstained tentacles crammed into the hole bled out in a dense bundle. Through my watering eyes, I climbed onto the root of the tree and crawled next to him. He gasped for air: the tentacles were tearing his lungs apart. Another bundle slithered out from his prostate.

“These things are eating you alive,” I told Tentacle Man. He coughed up blood. Half of his teeth had fallen out. The tentacles were transforming him, devouring his organs and bereaving him of blood.

“Get—” he choked out as little flecks of blood spat out from his mouth.

“Get help?” I gently asked him, as a bead of blood trickled down from underneath the cerebral vines.

“Get—” The tentacles writhed like serpents; he hemorrhaged from the holes in his torso. “Get—away from—here—”

The tentacles groped for me. I tried to run but it was too late. They strangled and hurled me into the swamp waters.

I shot upright in bed. I was back in my room. Crickets chirped outside my open window and the key strokes on Mom's typewriter echoed from down the hall. I still pictured those tentacles every time I blinked. It made my scalp itch. I glanced over at the dark photographs of Keanu, Darrell, and Dana on my nightstand and sighed.

I lay my head back down on my pillow. I awoke to hear the first birds chirping and feel the first rays of sunlight filtering through my window. I decided to get up early and found out if either Ivan or Vincent were awake.

I crossed the hall to the bathroom to freshen up and put on jeans, my Fleetwood Mac shirt, and my Chuck Taylors. I ran my comb through my hair before heading out the front door into the cloudless, late summer morning. A light dew sprinkled the grass and the peach tree, where tiny white peaches began to sprout from the blossoms.

I strolled past the little house on the corner, where the door was finally removed and replaced with a sheet of plastic.

I crossed over into the sunshine just before the corner of Franklin. As I turned the corner, I spotted Ivan on a lawn chair in the front yard, hunched over a pad of paper; he wore a white apron and white latex gloves. Vincent lay shirtless on his left side before him on a lounge chair, poking out his hips to accentuate the shape of his body.

“How'd I know you guys were going to be up?” I called out to them. Ivan grinned at me as I approached them.

“Yesterday I told him,” he pointed with a stick of black charcoal in hand, “I wanted to draw him because dramatic lighting suits his curves. I wasn't joking.” I stepped aside to stay out of his light as he blended the charcoal using two fingers.

“I'm art material,” Vincent sarcastically quipped, shifting his left arm to ease the weight of his head on his hand.

“Hey, you're voluptuous enough,” Ivan scoffed. “Hold still. I'm trying to get the shading on your arms and your paunch right.”

“I still think you're nuts, though.”

“Why?” I joined in. His right arm lazily rested over his belly and his jeans hugged his hips, making them seem fuller and rounder. “You're—Rubenesque. Pillowy. Curvaceous and beautiful. Pleasingly plump.”

“See, Vincent? You're beautiful!” Ivan agreed, rubbing his fingers on the charcoal.

“Yeah, I'm pleasingly plump if Antarctica is refreshingly chilly—hey!” I gave the soft skin on his belly a little pat.

“Your skin is so soft,” I remarked, “it's like butter.”

“Isn't it, though?” Ivan flashed me a sly grin before blowing away the charcoal dust.

“Wait, you touched him?” I raised an eyebrow.

“Of course I touched him. I've found the best way to draw real life subjects is to feel them first. Initially, I did that with apples and oranges, and then the tree in our backyard, and then with him. I touched his whole upper body before sitting down. And yes, I'm taking art again with Miss Black.” I gave him a quick hug as I peered down at the charcoal drawing and gasped. He had not only sketched out Vincent just right, but the charcoal accentuated his face and body; the sunlight on the side of his head contrasted with his black hair. Ivan focused on him so a faint line highlighted his hip and thigh.

“Oh, my Lord. Ivan, that's beautiful!”

“Lemme see—my hand's falling asleep anyways,” Vincent sat upright, shaking his left hand. He gaped at the drawing. “Oh, damn. I really _am_ art material!” The three of us busted out laughing before heading inside the house for coffee and cakes.

That same day we finally received a date for the trial, after being pushed back a second time: Black Friday over my trip, but Mom and Dad convinced me I needed a break so I made a reservation for a yurt near the shore and began saving more money for gas.

The day before the trip, Mom and I shopped around for stuffing, potatoes, green beans, and paper plates. We cooked the stuffing and made mashed potatoes that night just in case of no heat source: I decided to find something already cooked at a local market as I foresaw us eating it over the trip. Dad also checked the oil in the truck and assured the tires were inflated.

On the overcast, chilly Thanksgiving morning, I climbed into the truck with my purse and a travel mug with coffee, and my bowler hat on my head. I already packed my bright red overnight bag and my courier bag with my serape blanket, the food, and the plates into the truck. I bode them good luck for the next day.

“We've got this, honey,” Dad assured me with a kiss through the driver's side window, “we'll be waiting for you and the boys on Saturday night.”

I proceeded down to Franklin, where Ivan and Vincent awaited at the curb in front of the Wilson house. Ivan wore his fedora, a heavy black sweater and jeans, and big black boots, and slung a crimson overnight bag over his shoulder. Vincent wore a snug black buttoned sweatshirt with a little yucca flower pinned above his heart, black jeans, and black Beatle boots, and dragged a marbled black and silver suitcase behind him. They beamed at me as I parked at the curb and helped them put their things into the truck bed. Ivan slid into the middle seat next to me and gave me a tight hug.

“How are you this morning?” he politely greeted me.

“Excited. Looking forward to this trip. How 'bout you guys?”

“We are, too,” he eagerly replied as Vincent climbed into the passenger seat and closed the door.

“I could stand to get away from here,” Vincent confessed, buckling his seatbelt.

“Why's that?” I asked him as Ivan moved his legs over to let me shift into first gear.

“I already told him about this, but—” he paused, resting his elbow next to the window and his head on his hand.

“He got suspended,” Ivan paraphased, “about a week ago. We freaked because we thought he was getting expelled.”

I gaped at him as we turned onto Pacific Street.

“What'd you do?” I demanded. Vincent sighed through his nose as we pulled up to a stoplight.

“Vincent?” I lowered my voice. “What did you do?” He turned his head and seriously stared at me.

“I'm sure you know, I had Miss Knight for AP biology.”

“Keyword there is 'had', by the way,” Ivan interrupted.

“About a week ago, she was giving a lecture. Never mind she's made it crystal clear that she's got a problem with—the way I look. She talks to me like I'm idiot, too, because I took summer school like I somehow clawed my way into a college level class.”

“That's just the beginning,” Ivan interjected.

“So, one day I came to class early, and she strolled on over to me and I'm wearing this exact shirt. She sees my flower and asks me, 'is that a yew?' I said, 'no, it's yucca. I'm originally from New Mexico and yucca grows everywhere.' And then for no reason in particular, she starts chastising me for correcting her, and then she launches into this tirade about how much New Mexico sucks and it's so hot, dry, and full of nuclear waste, and I say, and I quote, 'did I stutter? I'm from there! Born and raised!' And—” He rubbed his face with his left hand.

“What the hell did she do to you!” I shouted as we turned towards the on ramp.

“Tried to strangle him,” Ivan calmly replied, “or at least tried to knock him out.”

“Yeah, she grabbed me by the scruff of my neck, with two fingers right on that juggular vein. She dragged me to the door, like she was going to throw me out. I couldn't breathe, either—exactly like what Ivan said, I thought she was strangling me. She yelled out, 'Vincent St. Vitus, I will send you to the principal's office so quickly, your head will spin and your liver will need to be looked at under gyroscope!' Little did she know, we were right next to the fire extinguisher next to the door. I still don't know how I managed to do this, but I gripped onto the handle… glared at her right in her idiot face, and said 'gyroscope this, bitch.'”

“He pelted her over the head,” Ivan concluded. I gaped at him as we merged onto Highway 101.

“OH MY GOD!” I yelped out. “Did you knock her out?”

“Yeah. Ivan and I both thought I killed her. I didn't, though.”

“It gets better,” Ivan chimed in, holding up a finger.

“Yeah, so two officials come in because one of my classmates was standing right there. And I said 'look, she's been making me so uncomfortable because of how I look. Then she takes it upon herself to argue with me for no reason. She dragged me to the door and nearly suffocated me with that death grip on me—' I showed them the fingernail marks on my neck and then said 'she's very impolite, she's nosy, she hands out grades because I got a seventy on the last quiz when I knew I aced it. She's rude to me, you know, talks to me like I'm an idiot. She has terrible fashion sense and she could've killed me.' And so—they—took my word for it.”

“Wow! But that doesn't answer why you got suspended, though,” I pointed out.

“Apparently, when I took a swing at her, the bottom button of my shirt popped off and hit the witness in the face. So I got suspended for assault on a student. And if that wasn't enough, when I explained it to my parents, they absolutely _howled_ with laughter. It goes without saying Lucinda Knight won't be teaching for a while. We've got a substitute for the time being.”

I reached over to give Vincent a high five as Ivan began laughing.

“My cousin Vinny,” he chuckled.

“Ivan the Terrible,” Vincent retorted. They both glanced over at me with curious expressions on their faces.

“I need a nickname,” I declared as we sped through Seaside.

“Yeah, you do,” Ivan concurred.

“Your dad used to call me 'fair little white haired one',” I recalled. “My dad named me after the daughter of one of the first Kings of the Britons. She was alluring and she won the heart of a kingdom with her beauty.”

We fell into silence all the way up to the Bay Area; it wasn't until we reached Sunnyvale when Vincent spoke again.

“Red-hot Rowena.”

“Oh, yeah!” Ivan's face lit up.

“Makes sense,” I agreed, “I mean, my favorite band is the Red Hot Chili Peppers.”

“You are red hot, too,” Ivan winked at me.

“It was either that or Randy Rowena,” Vincent confessed with a slight snicker.

“A sexy woman named after a sexy woman, I might say—wait, did I say that aloud?” Ivan brought a hand to his mouth. I burst out laughing. We had surpassed the early morning traffic over the Golden Gate Bridge so we crossed with ease towards Sausalito and the Marin Headlands; Ivan and Vincent peered out the window at the blue gray rippled waters down below and the skyline. They were sightseeing all the way into Napa Valley. Vincent rolled down the window at one point to take a whiff of the grapes.

“I think we're too far from the vineyards,” I admitted as the wind fluttered his black hair. They fixated on the patchwork of vineyards and clusters of oak trees stretched back from the highway to the fog capped hills. Around lunch time, we stopped in Santa Rosa for gas and food: I bought myself more coffee and a bag of peanuts. Ivan and Vincent bought horchata sugar plums.

“You guys sure do like your sugar plums, don't you?” I joked. While I let the tank fill up, I hung next to the rolled down driver's side window and examined the bag of sugar plums on Ivan's lap, the size of a personal bag of chips. A black and white unicorn with a bowed head posed on the front.

“I never got a good look at these,” I confessed, examining more closely: the unicorn had a solid black horn, mane, and tail with tiny silver glimmers and raised up its front leg as if preparing to charge forward. Its hips bore a black skull with the words “ **HERNANDEZ** ” and “ **HORCHATA SUGAR PLUMS** ” circumscribed in white cursive lettering and underneath the unicorn itself read “made with real rice, cinnamon, nutmeg, and milk.”

“The unicorn's name is Sordera,” Ivan explained, carefully opening the bag; Vincent popped a sugar plum into his mouth. “He and I love these stupid things.”

The gas nozzle emitted a loud _knock!_ and I returned it to the pump, then quickly ran into the bathroom to wash off my hands. From that point, I always needed clean hands and wrists. I slid behind the wheel right as Ivan handed me a few sugar plums.

“Why, thank you,” I kindly replied while buckling my seatbelt. I popped the creamy, smooth candies into my mouth as we returned to the highway towards Ukiah.

Tall pine trees began to line either side of the highway, before giving way to massive redwood trees stretching high up into the thinning overhanging fog. The damp canopy overhead glistened from the gray sunlight. It was nearly one o'clock by the time we passed a sign showing Eureka was a couple hundred miles up the road.

“We're making good time,” I remarked.

“I always thought northern California was further away,” Vincent confessed.

“Yeah, me, too,” Ivan chimed in.

“It's five hundred miles but we're further up the road than I planned,” I pointed out. “We need to check in some time before nine o'clock when the front office closes.”

I shifted my weight in the seat as we hummed through the dark redwood forest. I thought back to the dream within a dream with Nurse Basil and the other dream Tentacle Man. I remembered Vincent and Ivan's confession to seeing the same apparitions as me. Perhaps there was something in Monterey's water.

“Vincent, can I ask you something?”

“Shoot.”

“Is there anything in _New Age Alchemy_ about bad dreams? Like remedies or where they come from?”

He sighed through his nose and stared out the windshield, deep in thought.

“Yes,” he reluctantly replied. “Yes, there is. Why's that?”

“The past couple of years, I've been having these odd, and at times, terrifying dreams. I mean, I wake up scared. Sometimes they're so scary, I'm almost afraid to go back to sleep.”

“Couple of years?” He sounded shocked.

“Yeah. They don't happen every night, though. But I started getting them in the summer before my junior year. I dreamed about this undead queen floating towards me. And recently, I had a dream about being in a swamp, and there was a man laying on a tree with vines or tentacles—I wasn't sure what they were—coming out of holes in his body.”

“Ew,” Ivan winced. Vincent stuck out his tongue at that.

“Yeah, it was disgusting. Then there was that Nurse Basil dream back on New Year's.”

“By the way, did you see a man in black at all?” Vincent recalled.

“Yes.” I was surprised.

“And did Nurse Basil have a plunger with him?”

“No, he had bolt cutters,” I recalled.

“Jeez!” Ivan exclaimed. “In my dream, he had a jigsaw. With Vincent, he had a plunger.”

“Have you seen an old man and a little boy?” Vincent asked me. I shook my head.

“The night after the Nurse Basil dream, I had one about an old man and a little boy. He was tall with a big potbelly like me—he says that's me in about forty years—and the little boy was about nine or ten. He wouldn't stop crying and the man kept trying to calm him down. I woke up feeling totally weirded out.”

“Fascinating,” I remarked. “Unnerving, too. You said there are a few things in my aunt's book that go into dreams?”

“Yeah,” Vincent started, “like she talks about certain herbs and plants that, when ingested can do that, like whole nutmeg and certain medicine. Sometimes, if there's large amounts, like within range of overdose, the visions can be like the Nurse Basil dream. Back home in New Mexico, we had lophophora which my parents told me to stay away from because it can cause nightmares. The four cardinal elixirs will cause bad dreams, that is if they're in certain circumstances before they can do that. For example, Exaltation of Saturn needs to coexist with certain food and chemicals. But it seems unlikely that you'd take that because it makes camels out of humans, and none of us have touched any.”

“I haven't, either,” I pointed out.

“So, that taken into account, who knows where your nightmares are coming from. But whatever it is, it's probably nothing serious. Anyways, I'm glad Ukiah's coming up because I'm getting hungry again.”

Night fell by the time we checked in at the campground five hundred yards from the ocean. I made a quick solo errand to the market for a cooked herb and lemon chicken and a blueberry pie; the aroma of the chicken on the seat next to me only made me hungrier.

I parked in front of the yurt right as Vincent kicked back in one of the spindly white chairs on the front deck under the pale blue light of the porchlight. He folded his hands over his protruding belly right as I climbed out of the truck with the chicken and the pie.

“Where's the guy in the hat?” I asked him as I closed the door with my hip.

“He's—uh—making himself at home.”

The door of the yurt burst open and Ivan somersaulted onto the front deck with a white porcelain frying pan in hand. He scrambled to his feet while brandishing the pan about like a fencer. He briefly froze before running a hand through his hair.

“There's a couple of pans in one of the cabinets in there,” he pointed back to the yurt. I chuckled.

“I didn't want us eating microwaved mashed potatoes for Thanksgiving anyways.”

“Who does?” he grinned at me. We entered the yurt, a single round chilly room lit up with two hurricane lanterns on the floor and a wooden bunk bed opposite a soft blue couch and a heavy oak chair where we put down our luggage. Before us stood a short row of wooden cabinets next to a black electric stove and a black microwave atop a miniature fridge. I placed the chicken and the pie next to the stove.

“Ivan, go into my courier bag,” I gestured to the chair. “The food's inside of some Tupperware. The silverware and the plates are in there, too. I brought one of our knives from home to carve the chicken so be careful not to prick yourself.”

Ivan unsheathed said giant kitchen knife and raised an eyebrow before gingerly placing it on cabinet top. He then handed me the containers of mashed potatoes and gravy. I switched on two of the burners and dumped the potatoes into the pan and the green beans in another pan. Soon, the yurt filled with the warm aroma of food cooking. We made a buffet line, picking beans first, followed potatoes and gravy, and finishing it out with slices of chicken and silverware before taking our seats on the couch. They huddled down close to me to keep me warm.

I placed my plate of food on the cushion and knelt before my overnight bag. I unzipped the top and unfurled my big serape blanket. I handed a corner of the blanket to Ivan, who handed another corner to Vincent. We huddled even closer together under the blanket as we ate our Thanksgiving dinner.

“So did you see anything art related in town?” Ivan spoke up.

“There were a bunch of little shops and things on the way to the market. There's also a bridge that crosses into the south part of town and there are probably some more things there.”

“So who's sleeping where?” Vincent abruptly changed the subject.

“Dibs on top bunk!” I quickly called out.

“Damn.” Ivan frowned.

“I'll take the couch,” Vincent offered.

“You sure?” I furrowed my brow at that.

“Yeah. Unless Ivan wants to sleep head to toe.”

“I ain't sleeping with your stinky feet in my face.”

“Well, I ain't sleeping with your face in my stinky feet,” Vincent retorted.

They took second and third servings before we cut into the pie. Afterwards, we put the paper plates in the garbage can outside and they waited for me to change into my pajamas. I stood in front of the hurricane lanterns for better lighting as I stripped off my clothes and into my black and blue striped night shirt, black pajama bottoms, and my jacket.

“Okay, guys—” I called out and they returned to the yurt. I kept my back turned to give them privacy. Out of the corner of my eye, I spotted Ivan kneeling front of his overnight bag on the floor in front of the chair. I moved my head just enough to see the backside of his bare body. He had pearly white skin with a handful of tiny pinkish striations over his hips and a little roll of fat around his waist; I knew he was healthy after a bleak summer. He pulled a red and black fleece pajama shirt over his head and that was my cue to close my eyes again until their bags zip closed.

“Is there a bathroom around here somewhere?” Vincent wondered aloud.

“I think it's just an outhouse, Vince,” Ivan glumly replied. “Although there is a building down the driveway here.”

“The guy at the front desk said that's the lavatory,” I pointed out. “There are some sinks, if you were thinking of brushing your teeth.” He slipped his boots back on before heading out the door.

“Vincent—” I called after him. He glimpsed back at me with his eyebrows raised. “Take one of the lanterns with you.”

He grinned at me before picking the lantern on the left. I climbed up the wooden ladder onto the top bunk with my pillow. I felt Ivan tap my shoulder and him handing me the blanket.

“Why, thank you,” I sweetly told him and I spread the blanket over the top sheet.

“Mom and Mrs. St. Vitus told us to bring extra blankets with us,” he promptly explained with a shy smile; he reopened his overnight bag for his toothbrush and his toothpaste. “You know. In case we get too cold.”

He knitted his eyebrows together at me. “Don't tell me you forgot your toothbrush.”

“Nah. I just—” I nibbled on my bottom lip. Vincent took one of the two hurricane lanterns and I was exhausted from a long day of driving.

“I just—don't want to go out alone,” I confessed in a low voice. A warm rosy blush appeared in his face. He ran his fingers through his hair and cleared his throat. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah, it's just,” he sputtered, “that's… never really been… thrown out at me. I mean, thrown at me. I mean, thrown out there. I mean—” His mouth trembled as he unfurled two blankets from his bag. There was a low knock on the door and he scrambled to let Vincent back in.

“Wow, that was quick,” I remarked.

“I don't mess around,” he declared before turning attention to Ivan's flushed face. I climbed down the ladder to fetch my toothbrush and toothpaste. “Are you okay? You look like you just ran a mile.”

“Yeah, it's just—” I breezed past him onto the deck. “—we'll be back—”

Ivan stumbled behind me with the lantern in hand.

“Are you with me?” I called back to him. He scurried up to me with a warm but nervous smile.

“I am now,” he boldly declared as we neared the brick building with a dark pointed roof and bright yellow floodlights lining the awning.

“I'll meet you out here,” he assured me, taking the door on the left.

“I won't be long, either,” I kindly replied, opening the door on the right. I picked the white porcelain sink on the wall closest to me to brush my teeth. I thought about what happened back there. Ivan was more than the boy who loved his body, particularly when he confessed how no one ever asked him to join in on going somewhere at night. I had questions as I rinsed out my mouth and cleaned off my toothbrush. He and I rushed back to the yurt right as Vincent made his bed on the couch. The digital clock on the microwave read a quarter to eleven o'clock but it felt later.

I climbed onto the top bunk and slithered underneath the cold sheets as Vincent snuggled down on the couch.

“Are you going to be warm enough, Vincent?” I asked him.

“Who, me? Oh, yeah. I've got plenty of padding and this couch is comfy, too. This couch is _really_ comfy.”

Ivan poked his head out from the bottom bunk. “Lights out?”

“Lights out,” I echoed. I closed my eyes as he switched off both lanterns, engulfing the yurt in total darkness. The last thing I heard was him climbing into bed.


	14. The Other Great Laboratory Failure

A massive silk curtain melded upon itself into a swirling, velvety tunnel of a labyrinth. I slid my fingers over the smooth folded blue walls until I touched a pearl the size of a quarter stuck to the floor. There was something black on one side of the pure white pearl. I lifted my fingers to read the calligraphy letters: “Dark hair and a hefty appetite.”

“Rowena—” a voice overhead called. My eyes fluttered open at the two of them poking their heads up from the edge of the bunk bed.

“You were tossing around a lot,” Ivan promptly said in a broken voice, rubbing his eyes, “like—a lot. You kept rubbing the mattress and the pillow. It started to bug me.”

“You kept saying 'dark hair', too,” Vincent added. “At first, sounded like 'Darfur', and then I looked over at him and said 'no, she's saying “dark hair” not “Darfur”'—”

“And then we decided it'd better if we woke you up. It's nearly nine anyways.”

I rubbed my eyes and climbed out of bed. As with the night before, they waited outside for me to dress in a sweater and jeans and I kept my back turned while they dressed. We drove into town on this damp, crisp morning where the low gray clouds drifted in from the ocean in massive blocks; we crossed the Patterson Bridge to the south end of town.

“You go by—what was it again?” Vincent recalled, taking a glimpse at me.

“Manzarek.”

“Manzarek! That was it!”

I peered out the window at the immense mouth of the Rogue River flowing out to the ocean. A gust of wind hit the truck and I jerked the wheel to keep us in our lane all the way into that side of town. We stopped at a diner for breakfast, then to the drugstore next door for a disposable camera, and to an art glass shop.

Ivan acted like a child in a candy store as he examined at the fused glass bowls on display. He gently placed his hands on a red, violet, blue, and orange pansy flower bowl and closed his eyes to feel the smooth texture of the glass. The clerk with flyaway hair asked him if he was buying it for the handsome price of three hundred fifty dollars.

“No, I'm just in utmost bliss right now,” he answered, opening his eyes, “I want to be an art student.”

Vincent bought a black star pendant with a white outline before we moved onto Dutch Bros for coffee and returned to the truck. We drove down to the beach and the small parking lot separated from the sandy mounds by a low brick wall. Since neither of us wanted to take our shoes off, but neither of us wanted sand in our shoes, we held onto each shoulders to steady our balance on the way down to the water. Massive white breakers crashed down on the broken stone cliffs up ahead, before fizzling out into soapy white foam. I shivered in my jacket at the feel of the crisp oceanic breeze against my face.

At one point, Vincent stopped behind Ivan and me to pick something up from the sand. He darted into the wet part of the sand when the waves retracted. Ivan found a stick in the dry part and drew something on the beach. I turned around to see Vincent being hit in the below the belt and shoved backwards by a breaker. I returned to Ivan writing on the beach.

“What's that say?” I shouted over the roar of the ocean. He stepped aside for me to read the fancy curled writing reading: **Red hot Rowena, Ivan the Terrible, and Cousin Vinny's Oregon Adventure!** with little stars next to our names. He held out his arms as if beholding a masterpiece and I took a picture. Vincent returned to us, drenched and holding a handful of seashells.

“Souvenirs,” he announced with a grin, holding out the shells. I picked one colorful clam shell from his hand. A thick, sticky glob of mud clung to the side fell off as soon as I touched it with my index finger. Another piece of mud stuck on the shell fell right off when I touched it.

I tried to examine the mud on the shell, glimmering with miniscule golden flecks, but it slid right off as if I wore latex gloves. Ivan crouched down and picked up a little mud from the beach, and it remained intact. I picked up a second seashell: another glob glued to the shell fell off like a water droplet.

“What the hell?” Vincent touched a bit of mud on a third shell: the wet sand clung to his skin. I touched the same piece of mud and it bled off of me.

“It's like it's oversaturated,” he remarked, staring at me in the face, “it's not, though.”

A wave crashed down behind him and showered sea spray over us. The spray soaked the little double underneath his chin and his neck and matted his hair to the side of his face. Ivan's hair and face soaked from the spray but it all bled off of me as if I was waterproof. Vincent gasped.

“Exaltation of Saturn,” he breathed out.

“Huh?” I was confused.

“Remember what I said about Exaltation of Saturn? It makes a person into a camel. They can go for prolonged periods without hydration. Plentiful amounts inside you can resist the salinity and alkalinity levels of seawater. Where everything is salty, basic, and taking the water out, you're resisting it because it's alkaline enough to make the mud and sea spray bleed off.”

“But I haven't taken any Exaltation of Saturn,” I insisted.

“But you have it inside of you—” He brought his face close to my neck as if he was about to kiss me and closed his eyes. He hesitated for a good minute before reopening his eyes. “I can barely smell it. I can't say how much is inside you, but it's there.”

“Smell what?”

“Lemons. Lemon balm. All things aromatic. It's emanating from your pores, so I know it's not from cultivating lemons. Aunt Indigo has said it's the only one of the four cardinals with a distinct aroma. _New Age Alchemy_ says it was originally a perfume.”

I clasped a hand to my forehead.

“It's okay,” he assured me, placing both hands on my shoulders, “it's not lethal. I promise. In large amounts, it can make you feel waterlogged but that's it. It's very healthy for you. In a way, it's similar to going vegetarian because most vegetables, especially leafy green ones, are highly alkaline but they don't change the alkalinity of your blood. It can help your liver, your nerves, and your skin. That's probably why your skin's so nice.”

“And probably why I've been having nightmares, too,” I glumly added.

“Well, see—there, it needs to be in the presence of particularly acidic food like citrus—” We gasped in unison.

“Citrus!” he shouted over the roar of the ocean.

“Citrus!” I echoed. “Lemons!”

“Peaches, too!” he added. “It's reacting with lemon juice and peaches inside your stomach to induce hallucinations. It seems counterintuitive because lemons are acidic but you're resisting the salinity of the ocean. Your menstrual periods must be accentuating it because of blood loss. Oh my God—that's—”

“That's insane!” Ivan shouted.

“I want to know who's been giving it to you!” Vincent exclaimed.

“Wait, what does it look like?” I demanded.

“It's slime. It resembles melted Provolone cheese or yellow mustard depending on the concentration of lemon.”

Another breaker crashed down on a cliff and the spray rained down on us; it bled off of me as if my body was laminated. They both shivered from their drenched clothes against the wind.  
“I think we should leave,” I suggested as another big wave rolled in. I stuffed the camera back into my purse while we raced back up the trail to the truck. Vincent swiftly stripped off his jacket before chucking it into the bed of the truck. He violently shivered as he shut the door.

“What I don't understand,” I began, my voice breaking and my ears whirring, “is if Exaltation of Saturn is basic, wouldn't I suffer from chronic dehydration? I'd want drinks of water constantly and I don't. I drink the normal amount of water.” I switched on the heater full blast.

“The human body is… amazing, Rowena,” Vincent pointed out. “Ivan, did you by any chance, tell her about the time I had my stomach pumped?”

“I did. And forgive me, too.”

“It's alright, man, there are worse things I could be thin about. Well, before that happened, I was skinny, scrawny even. When I had my stomach pumped, I lost weight until I decided I needed my body back. I gained all that weight back and then some, but I'm healthy now. I say this because when I was in the hospital, I thought 'hell, I'm just a kid but this is it. My body is dying and I can't see myself making it past this week.' That's an extreme example but the point is your body wants you alive, no matter what. If you put enough of something in, you'll adjust to it. I've heard about people who've smoked for years and ended up living to the century mark. Conversely, there are people who go vegan and don't live past middle age. Exaltation is healthy for humans, and since you've never seen it before, it sounds like someone spiked your food with it—things made with lemons and peaches, things you've long adjusted to—and in small amounts so you wouldn't notice it. Whoever's been giving it to you has good intentions, but they didn't think of the consequences.”

I sighed through my nose. Ivan moved his legs over as I shifted into reverse. The wind pummeled the truck across the Patterson Bridge but I kept us in the lane all the way back to the campground.

I switched off the engine and bowed my head against the steering wheel. I had something inside of me, something that became a part of my body chemistry, with every peach and every lemon.

“Yeah, you smell like lemons,” Ivan pointed out. “I'm not trying to be an ass. I actually love that smell. But it's pronounced.”

“It's the salt,” Vincent pointed out. “It's exactly like sprinkling salt on a piece of food for taste.”

It was there when it dawned on me.

“My parents gave it to me.” They gaped at me in shock.

“Why would they—” Ivan stuttered. Vincent's mouth dropped open but no sound came out.

“Who knows,” I bluntly replied. “But tomorrow, after I drop you guys off, I'm going to find out why.”

The three of us awoke bright and early the next morning to make the long drive home. I tried to not let the fact I reeked of lemons bother me when we stopped in Ukiah, Santa Rosa, and Sunnyvale. At one point, I asked Vincent why he and Ivan had a Nurse Basil dream, and he suggested they probably contracted residue from the lemons and peaches as they always ate something at my house.

It was past six when we returned to Ivan's driveway. He and Vincent tightly hugged me before stepping outside. I returned home in such loud silence. The little house on the corner was still blanketed in complete darkness, compared to my house, with the bright porchlight resembling a lighthouse.

I parked in the driveway and rubbed my eyes. Someone pulled the blinds in the dining room window closed and the car was gone. I had always swallowed down my parents' word before then out of trust.

I headed up to the porch with my purse over my shoulder. I opened the front door to see Mom and Dad hunched over the table with scotch glasses and a red glass bottle of Scarlet Spiral Whiskey between them. Mom rested her head in her hand; Dad left his tie slung around his neck. Aunt Indigo loomed behind them with her arms folded. She sniffled the air as soon as I shut the door.

“She smells like lemons,” she announced in a low voice.

“What's happening?” I demanded.

“Aunt Indigo told us it was going to come to this,” Dad promptly told me in a low voice.

“What's happening?” I repeated in a stronger tone of voice. Mom rubbed her eyes.

“Rowena—” she slowly explained, “please don't freak out. Aunt Indigo has been sending us Exaltation of Saturn to reset your memory.” My mouth dropped open.

“Rowena,” Dad began, “honey—I want you to understand that I am saying this as gingerly as possible. The three of us—four of us, I should say, Christina's part of this, too—are from space. In February 1924, our predecessors—your great great grandparents Edgar Manzarek and Catherine Patterson—left Earth for space. They were shaken by the Great War and everything happening in Europe. They foresaw Earth waging more war. So they called it the Orion Colony: it was a peaceful utopia with the technological chops to make Robert Oppenheimer look like the giver of life and every Soviet scientist alive like an antique. They based out of Pluto but came insofar as Olympus Mons. When you began to ask questions six years ago, we got scared and Aunt Indigo sent it to us because while it heals, Exaltation of Saturn plays on the selective characteristic of memory to keep you quiet. For example, while some days seem prominent to you, the mundane days not so much, and it wildly plays on that.”

I felt sick. Dad sighed and ran a hand through his hair.

“Why would you lie to me?” I choked out.

“To protect you,” Mom tearfully confessed.

“Honey, the four of us were exiled as children,” Dad continued. “Indigo was thirteen. I was four. That colony is dangerous. When you're exiled, they wipe out every single record of your existence and erase you from personal and interpersonal memory. It's like a scarlet letter: any mention of an exile and pay the price.”

“We never told you because if anybody ever found out about us being exiles, they would take us away from you,” Mom added, brushing away tears. “So we spiked nearly everything with peaches and lemons with Exaltation of Saturn.”

“Even though,” Aunt Indigo clarified, “Exaltation is healthy for a human, it combined with all those acids inside your stomach and catalyzed by blood loss. It put you in a mind control zombie state, eating it all up without question. We gave you the life we never had because feeding you lies alone wouldn't suffice. But I completely forgot about two by-products. The first is violent hallucinations. The second is when you're in an area of high salinity, in this case the beach, it accentuates its aromatic nature. I knew the second you walked through that door, you were going to reek of lemons.”

“But I still don't understand,” I stammered, “why you would—would—would _lie_. And to me!”

“Rowena,” Aunt Indigo began. She trudged towards the sink and removed the bandana from her head, which revealed her short indigo hair. She leaned back against the countertop launching into an explanation. “Rowena, you make up your place in the world. There are people protecting you from threats to your very existence. There's the consequence: sure, you might be protected from those hungry warmongering wolves that make up our society and the Orion Colony. What you don't see is your protection slowly destroying your place in the world. It's because you've been numbed. Given anesthesia.” She closed her eyes.

“We've blinded you in order to protect you from your own heritage,” her voice broke, “now we're paying for it. We're paying the price. If you're going to point fingers at anyone, do it to me. I got us exiled. It's all my fault.”

“Why?” I demanded. “What'd you do?” She sniffled and brushed away tears.

“Aunt Indigo, what did you do?”

“When I turned twelve, when I got word warfare was going to get real, I returned to space—out to Saturn's moon Titan. I set up camp, and someone from the American military followed me out, thinking I was an extraterrestrial. The heads of the Colony accused me of bringing Earthlings out when I swore it wasn't my fault. But they convinced me, my siblings, and everyone in space otherwise while they destroyed our records. They also… forced me to stay quiet about it. So Matt, Hope, Christina, and I decided Earth would be our home forever and we started over again.”

“So, they exiled you on accident?”

“Not according to them, no,” Dad gravely added, running his hand through his hair again. “We were forbidden from acknowledging it as that. To them, when you put yourself into a situation that results in exile, it's seen as putting their legacy in jeopardy. We're seen as rogues and they did everything they could to rid of us. They fight tooth and nail until not a trace is left. To them, it was Indigo's fault.”

My knees started to tremble. I sank down into the chair. Aunt Indigo threw her arms around me and bawled into my ear; Mom and Dad followed.

“So—” I started over Aunt Indigo's weeping. “—what do I say to Ivan and Vincent? They could smell lemons.” Aunt Indigo buried her face in my jacket.

“Tell them—” Mom started, her voice trembling. I glanced back at her brushing tears from her eyes.

“Tell them—we were giving it to you to enhance your health.”

I wanted to object to the idea of lying to my friends, but simultaneously, I kept the case a secret and I lied to them about using a different last name. I wanted to do good in my life and I ended up doing the exact opposite.


	15. The Hysteric

I stepped into the music shop away from the falling rain and removed my bowler hat. I just received my first paycheck as assistant librarian and I decided to splurge a bit.

Ivan and Vincent both graduated early with honors: Ivan with the National Art Honor Society, Vincent with the National Honors Society, and they both walked across that stage and shook hands with Principal Hatchett. After I received a second rejection letter from Santa Cruz, Mr. St. Vitus suggested the three of us attend the same community college Billy attended: I soon decided on transferring two years later. But for the time being, we were attending college together that next Monday.

Hundreds of CDs and vinyl records neatly stood on display on wooden shelves on either side of me. Dozens of posters plastered the back wall above the rock n' roll section. I scanned the shelves for Nirvana's final album. They sold all of their copies of _Nevermind_ , especially a year and a half after Kurt's passing. Ivan and I were despondent as we never got to see them.

Within time, I picked _In Utero_ off the shelf. Several copies of _Superunknown_ stood on a shelf to the right above my head out of my reach. I stood on my toes and groped for the one in front.

“Here, let me get that for you—”

A tall young man wearing a pearlescent white raincoat and matching rubber boots picked the jewel case off the shelf and handed it to me. He had thin silvery white blond hair atop his head, a narrow face, and big black holes for eyes.

“Oh, hi, Sully!” He tilted his head to the side, confused. “It's me, Rowena. Remember, Victor introduced me to you?”

His face lit up. “Oh, yeah! Little Rowena! How are you?” he greeted as he put his arms around me.

“I'm doing great. My friends Ivan and Vincent graduated and the three of us are going to school together.”

“Oh?” He raised his eyebrows.

“Yeah, we're just going to the community college here in town.”

“All three of you?” He walked with me to the cash register.

“Yeah. We're like a little club.” I placed the two jewel cases down on the countertop for the clerk to ring me up for ten dollars. I thanked her before we headed out the door.

“I have a suggestion,” he began as we stopped on the sidewalk and I put my hat back on. “If you're thinking of buying a place, and I know it's tricky, but if you'd like, you could come stay with Vic and me.”

“Oh, Sully, that's sweet of you,” I assured him, “but I don't plan on moving out just yet. And I don't want to do that to you guys. It'd be so crowded with the five of us.”

“No, I—” He drew closer to me. “I meant you. If that's okay by them.”

“I'm… sure it'd be,” I assured him, confused. “It's not like I'm dating them, so should it happen, I'm sure it'd be alright.”

“Oh, I see. Can—can I have another hug?”

“Of course!” We embraced once more before I climbed into the truck. In my rear view mirror, I watched him briskly stride away from the truck and pull out a brick phone from his coat pocket. I shrugged as I turned down Wainwright, the block before Hellam, so I wouldn't have to pass the house on the corner. Alastair was still in jail and Christina was transferred to an institution somewhere in Northern California a year ago. Patrick disappeared after my trip to the Oregon Coast and Mr. Marsh had no answers, either. Hence, we only had evidence and testimonials from Aunt Indigo and myself.

I kept one hand on my hat as I walked up to the house and watched Dad hang up the phone.

“There she is,” he greeted me with a warm smile. I hung my hat on the hook next to the door and lay the albums down on the couch so as to remove my coat.

“Who'd you just get off the phone with?” I inquiringly asked him.

“Oh, it was Sonia. Mrs. St. Vitus. She, Bob, and Vincent were just checking up on us the week before school started.”

“Aw!” I was delighted to hear that.

“Ivan and Elka were curious about us, too,” he continued, straightening his house coat.

“Oh, yeah, Ivan says we're all in this together. Honestly, I can't envision him or Vincent living in isolation or without something comfy. I picture them in cozy little houses or condos full of warm stuff and sleeping in beds with tons of blankets.”

“I do, too. What you got there, by the way?” I held up the two albums and he gave me a thumbs up.

“That was another thing the Colony forbade,” he recalled, his expression turning serious.

“What, music?”

“Well,” he shifted his weight, “any kind of art, really. Anything made with your hands, heart, and mind, be it a simple pencil sketch or a compilation of music was banned. They said it was the enemy to their scientific goals. I remember hearing of a woman—an exile—who asked if she could study art up there on Pluto and they threw these frivolous questions at her like 'what are you going to do with that?', you know, making her feel guilty. When the colony formed, they decreed art of any kind, be it Renaissance paintings, poetry, acting, or something a child made, was banned for eternity. That's why we love Ivan and Vincent, too. They're not afraid of themselves. And it's why we encourage you to expose yourself to art as well as sciences because it was out of the question for the four of us. So—”

He gestured down the hallway. “—go listen to Nirvana with Keanu, Dana, and Darrell.”

The next day, I made a quick errand for spices. I passed the corrals of shopping carts and the pay phones in front of the cozy market. I headed towards the spice rack when someone called out my name. Ivan, Vincent, Mr. St. Vitus, and Grandma Slate entered through the front door. I greeted each of them with a big hug.

Ivan had gained some weight since the Oregon trip: his face was rounder and a little double formed under his chin. His waist poked out and his shirts were a bit snug. He felt so much softer: I held him close for a good long minute. Vincent, on the other hand, started to slim down a bit as his face narrowed quite a bit. He stepped back for a second.

“Hold out your… right hand.” I closed my eyes and felt something sliding onto my middle finger. I examined the smooth silver ring bearing a royal blue star shaped gem.

“It's a friendship ring.” He held up his hand to show the same ring on his pinky finger. Ivan had one on his index finger. I embraced them both again.

“It gets even better,” Mr. St. Vitus started, setting his arm around Grandma Slate who rested her head on his chest. “Because Czechoslovakia is the Czech Republic and Slovakia now, Grandma Slate qualifies for dual citizenship. She'll be able to live in three countries now.”

“Oh, that's wonderful!” I exclaimed.

“We are going to have a celebratory dinner tonight as a result,” she informed me, “you are more than welcome to attend.”

“I'm sure my mom and dad would want to come to that,” I assured her as I picked up a bundle of cinnamon sticks.

“We have a quick stop here, then next door, three doors down, before going back home,” Mr. St. Vitus told me as he grabbed a gallon of milk from the shelf next to me. “The boys are with us because the Misses are composing something secret at home.”

“Oh, I see,” I playfully replied as I picked up a jar of ground nutmeg and a small sack of brown sugar before heading to the register. Ivan picked two cans of pinto beans from the shelf and Grandma Slate picked some green and red chile peppers from the display. They filed behind me as I paid a few dollars and headed out the door into the clear crisp morning.

I briefly stopped on the curb to stuff the receipt into my purse and the change into my coat pocket when a big black Mustang roared up to the curb. The passenger door flung open. Before I could say anything, Sully reached out the door and yanked me into the front seat.

“Come here!” he yelled. He wrapped his arm around my neck as if trying to silence me, or suffocate me. I had my hands full so I was unable to escape. But the door stood wide open so I could witness the horrified expressions on Ivan and the St. Vituses' faces as they exited the market.

“Vincent! Ivan!” I shouted. “Call the police! Vincent! Ivan! CALL THE POLICE! VINCENT! IVAN!”

Mr. St. Vitus sprinted to the closest pay phone just as Sully roared away through the parking lot. He tore onto Pacific Street; the passenger side door also never closed.

“FIRE! FIRE!” I yelled out at the top of my lungs. A couple of passersby watched, dumbfounded, at the black Mustang speeding down the street, well above the speed limit and running red lights. He had a death grip around my neck so even though I thought he was strangling me, he kept me from sliding out onto the street when we skidded onto Herrmann.

“FIRE! FIRE!” I screamed at two guys on bikes.

“SHUT UP!” he shouted as we darted to the high school. I struggled to breathe. I recognized the tall field lights lining the football field. I gripped onto my open purse and the two bags of spices with my left hand. Vincent put the star ring on my right hand. With that hand, I took a swing at Sully right in the temple.

His head ricocheted against the window and he violently jerked the steering wheel to the left. The car veered off the road and shattered the separating fence between the parking lot and the street. A piece of the fence tore off and clung to the front hood of the car as we speared across the pavement. He slammed on the brakes just in front of the office.

I punched him in the nose. He loosened his grip and I ducked out of the car.

“Rowena, come back here!” he hollered as he scrambled out the driver's side door. I heard his sneakers right behind me.

“Sully!” I heard a familiar voice yell out to my left. Victor sprinted down the stairs of Building 6 and broke into a run. I stopped. Now I was cornered. Sully limped towards me, the entire right side of his face glistened with blood.

“SULLIVAN!” I shouted at him. His face darkened to a deep crimson red, as red as the blood on his face. He gritted his teeth and started to seethe. He had the most inhuman, blackest eyes I had ever seen. He gripped onto my hair on the back of my head, hard. Pain shot down my neck and spine. I thought he tore out some of my hair.

“DON'T YOU EVER CALL ME BY MY WHOLE NAME! NEVER CALL ME SULLIVAN! NEVER AGAIN!”

“Let her go! Let her go!” Victor insisted. I peered back at him as he wiped the blood trickling down from his nose.

“Go with him!” he growled at me before stalking back to the Mustang. Victor grasped onto my arm and dragged me past Building 6 and towards the boys' locker room. He shoved me down onto the sidewalk next to the entrance. Rows and rows of paint cans stacked upon each other lined the edge of the sidewalk. The cans all had big white labels with a familiar name written in thick black permanent marker plastered on the side.

“'Sock it to Saturn?'”

“Fall of Saturn,” Victor clarified. “Sully and I are just like Vincent. We're both students of your aunt. Sully studied that seven hundred and twelve page doorstop, _New Age Alchemy_. Your other aunt, that poor woman, so clueless. Had no idea what was coming. No one ever suspected it'd be us, now did they?”

Sully rounded the corner, his face and temple still bleeding. The blood glistened in the morning sun. It was clear right then and there how Aunt Christina was poisoned.

“You—” I sputtered. He flashed me a malicious grin. “YOU POISONED MY AUNT CHRISTINA!”

His grin twisted into a snarl. “Correction. Alastair did. I was merely a messager.”

“What do you mean?”

He wiped his nose again. “We met Alastair after she pulled Patrick out of school. He was sick and tired of her. She was so deceptive, always kidding herself. Then he met us. He told us about a letter in the first edition of the book, one from Indigo to Christina. She said to hide the book from him and that obviously backfired. When she was in the hospital from a stab wound, he gave us the book so we could concoct something to finish her. So we mixed up—a lot, as you can see—of Fall of Saturn because it's so deadly. We also made some Fall of Mars just in case.”

“But why the school?” I demanded. They glanced at one another before returning to me.

“See, we made too much Fall of Saturn,” Victor joined in as a conniving smirk crossed his face. “Way too much. I put a decimal point in the wrong spot so we made a surplus. We need to rid of it, and what better way than put it into the school's water? No one will ever know because we're going to dispose of you and we're bailing afterwards. Don't try to run on us, either. We have hundreds of little lead friends and they run faster than you can.”

He yanked me up onto my feet. Sully wiped his nose a third time before speaking again.

“They let you go too easily,” he growled. Before I could argue, he raised his hand to silence me. I clenched my fists. “Ivan and Vincent let you go too easily. They left you alone. They're not your friends.”

“They are SO!” I swung my arm around and took a blow to the other side of his head: I felt my ring dig into the spot above his eyebrow. Victor lunged for my throat. He pressed me against the wall next to the door.

“Don't get smart with us,” he threatened. “There's two of us. There's only one of you. We're smarter and better. We will give you twice the lethal dosage.” He released my neck and coldly glared at me.

“I'm going to get one of the guns out from the car,” he curtly told me, “I'll be right back.”

He left me alone with Sully, who fingered the new gash on the side of his head.

“I'm going to shower the blood off of me and I'm leaving the door open. You move from your spot, I will see to it that you get so many bullets in your head.”

He tore off his bloodstained clothes before he yanked and propped the door open with the little stop at the bottom. I watched him strip off his underwear and walk to the nearest shower. The dials squeaked and water shot out of the faucet head in a loud whistle. The back of my head still ached from where he pulled my hair. As I watched him shower, I remembered what Vincent said about being in the hospital. I was just a kid but this was it. This was the end right here.

I thought about my parents, Aunt Indigo and Aunt Christina, Fiona and Billy, Mark, Ashley, and Patrick. I pictured Ivan and Vincent going to school all alone. I thought about all my past teachers and the ones I'd never meet. I though about my day trip to Morro Bay with Patrick, my trip to Oregon, and the night I met Dana Carvey and Darrell Hammond. If only there was a way I could tell Keanu Reeves he was my inspiration, but it was impossible at this point.

I faced the stack of paint cans; there was one with the label “Move to Mars”. I had no choice but to act. Victor would return with a gun and Sully would be finished. He turned his back to me.

I lunged for that paint can and pried off the lid. Silvery blue white liquid smelling of fallen rain filled the inside of the can three quarters of the way. I glanced back at Sully, who had his back turned.

I held the can by the base. It all happened in slow motion: the concrete floor felt slippery from the spray of the shower but my Chuck Taylors stayed on track. I thrusted the can forward right as he turned around. The Fall of Mars speared him square in the middle of his chest.

It trickled down his naked body and immediately began to eat into his flesh as feathers of white smoke drifted off. He began to yell out in pain. I saw water only exacerbated Fall of Mars as it quickly honeycombed down to the bone. Big black blisters began to fill and swell around the channels like nasty third degree burns. I recoiled to the door because the smell emanating from the channels was rank, burning my nostrils. His yells morphed into blood curdling screams as the Fall of Mars ran down onto his genitals and his thighs. His arms violently quivered as he strove to turn off the water. He collapsed onto the wet floor, letting out the most ungodly, primal scream I ever heard in my life.

I stumbled onto the sidewalk sprinted as Victor sprinted from the side of the building with a rifle in hand. Two policemen in black uniforms chased after him. One tackled him before he reached the fence and cuffed him right there.

I dropped the paint can on the sidewalk and it made a loud _clang_. The second officer took notice and hurried towards me. I began to weep at the sight of him.

“Are you okay?” he asked me. He was an older man with curly shoulder length golden brown hair, thoughtful green eyes, a perfectly straight nose, a squarish face, and a sparse black mustache.

“They were going to kill me!” I declared, my voice breaking. The policeman gaped at Sully collapsed against the showers, smoldering and screaming in pain.

“He—He kidnapped me and then he was going to POISON ME!” I cried out. He returned to me, mortified, but gently set a hand on my shoulder. I wanted to fall to my knees right there. He flung his arms around me and I bawled into his shirt.

“It's okay,” he cooed in my ear. “It's okay. You're safe now. It's okay.”

“Chief!” He turned around at two people in haz-mat suits holding cookie sheets with what resembled pieces of peanut brittle.

“We found these in the back room of the library,” the one on the right informed him, “and who knows how many are in the cafeteria right now. We ran meters over them and they're chock full of corrosive, lead based poison.”

The first policeman guided Victor towards us with his arms cuffed behind him.

“I hope you die,” I barked at him, feeling tears stream down my face. “I hope you and Sullivan both die with Alastair.”

“Get a medic,” the policeman ordered the two officers in haz-mat suits. “Get a couple of medics. She's scared out of her wits. I'll be with her for a while.”

The policeman introduced himself as Chief Darcy Spencer and he arrested Alastair. He stayed with me on the back of the ambulance as I told him everything. He draped a blanket around my shoulders and gave me a drink of water while we watched the police tape off the library and the Monterey Cafe. He spoke to another officer about something before returning to me.

“That officer I was just speaking to,” he started, “told me Sullivan needed to be air lifted to the jail unit up in San Francisco and Victor is going to jail here in Monterey. They're not pressing charges, mainly because they are horrified of your father. She called your parents and they're on their way right now to come get you. They were cornered at your house by a Tim Marsh, I think his name was? He was badgering them about a case your father's working on and they nearly pushed him down. Do you know the family that called us out here?”

“The St. Vituses? Yeah. The boy, Vincent, is one of my best friends. His dad called the police.”

“There was a second one.”

“That's Ivan Wilson, my other best friend. He lives across the street from them over on Franklin, just him and his mom.”

“And what's his name, Vincent's father?”

“Robert, or Bob, as we all call him.” I took another drink of water and I fetched up a heavy sigh. Chief Spencer put his hand on my shoulder again right as Mom and Dad's car bounded into the parking lot behind a squad car and they rushed towards me. I wept at the sight of their open arms.

“It all happened so fast,” I sputtered. “I thought—for sure I was—I was going to die.”

“It's okay,” Dad echoed Chief Spencer's words. “It's okay. Mama's got you and Daddy's got you. It's okay.”

“You're safe now, honey,” Mom tearfully assured me as she set a hand on the back of my head, but I still cried. Mom gently peeled the blanket off and handed me my purse. They both helped me down from the back of the ambulance; they both kept one arm around me as we returned to the car.

“Oh my God, the truck!” I yelped out. They both gaped at me.

“Where is it?” Mom's eyes widened in horror.

“It's—in the parking lot of the market.”

“Oh, good. That worried me for a second. Well, let's get it and then we'll go home.”

We piled into the car and drove to the market, where the truck awaited us in the same spot. Ivan and the St. Vituses had gone home but I knew they wanted to know what happened. Dad offered to take the truck home and Mom and I took the car.

“So what's this I heard about Mr. Marsh?” I asked her as we headed back down Pacific.

“You're not going to believe this. Apparently, Patrick is reported missing now.”

“What!”

“Yeah. He went missing. No one has a clue how he got out of the halfway house. The police in Sacramento can't find him anywhere and Mr. Marsh is all bent out of shape, thinking we took him home with us.”

“And he doesn't believe you?”

“Nope,” Mom glumly replied as we turned onto Franklin. I noticed the St. Vituses' truck parked in their driveway. “He kept asking us these questions like 'where is he? What are you doing? Where's your daughter? I'll sue you both, like it or not!' and then the police called us and said you've been kidnapped but they found you pretty quickly because of Mr. St. Vitus and also Ivan's observation skills, thanks to his drawing.”

“Ivan was able to describe the car because of his drawing?”

“Yeah. The power of art, right?”

“Wow!”

We rolled up to the house; I recognized Mr. Marsh beneath the peach tree with his hands pressed onto his hips and scowling at us. Mom cranked down the driver's side window.

“Tim, I'm not going to tell you again,” she firmly told him, “he's not here.”

“Yeah? How do I know that's not Patrick in disguise right next to you?”

“That's Rowena! You've seen her before!”

“Alright, come here—” Dad yanked him away from the window.  
“Matt, don't!” Mom insisted, unbuckling her seatbelt. “Honey, stay here—”

“Hope, I'm not going to do anything to him,” he assured her as she scrambled out of the car. “I know better than that. I am, however, going to ask him if he's feeling okay.”

“What are you talking about, Patterson?” Mr. Marsh pressed himself against Dad's chest.

“Well, Timothy, you're falsely accusing us of kidnapping. You're handing out allegations like breath mints on basis of speculation. You have no proof. See, we had to leave because my daughter was kidnapped. Luckily, some good Samaritans called the police and they tracked the kidnappers just in time. Now—you have a choice, Counselor. You can either continue to accuse us for hapless reasons or you can get off my property because you're trespassing.”

“Trespassing? Pfff, right, that'll fly by Judge Ferreira once I have a warrant to search your premises.”

“Hope and I asked you to leave several times, therefore you are trespassing. You need to leave.”

Mr. Marsh glared at me before lunging through the open window. My hands shook so much I could scarcely unclick my seatbelt. I clambered out of the car and shot into the backyard. I only heard Mom shouting, “Matthew Bernard Patterson! Let him go!”

I blindly ran to the back door. I stumbled into the house and left the door open. I rushed into Dad's office and dove into the space under the desk. I hunkered down and tugged the chair towards me. There was a gap between the right arm of the chair and the edge of the desk. I tried to calm my breathing as they came into the house.

“I saw the car door open,” Mr. Marsh declared.

“She's traumatized, you idiot!” Mom exclaimed. There was silence; the only sound came from my hammering heartbeat.

“Your middle name is Bernard?”

“Yeah. When I was younger, they called me 'nards' every time I brought it up. That's no excuse to break into my house, though!”

“Counselor, you need to leave,” Mom shouted, “or Darcy Spencer will have you hauled away in handcuffs with those scoundrels that took my daughter!”

“I'm sure there was a good reason they took her,” Mr. Marsh coyly reassured them, his voice close to the office door.

“Quit changing the subject!” Mom shrieked.

“Counselor, it takes three lawsuits, five hung juries, and a mistrial to become that condescending. Say that again and I will verify you get double time with Mr. Ravens in the slammer. Fine, we'll look around—AGAIN.”

There were three shelves underneath the cabinet; the one closest to the floor had that book of Vietnamese history. I first thought of throwing the book at Mr. Marsh's head, but I chose to use the book to shield my face and close that gap. It had a solid black leather cover, perfect for blocking out light.

Trying to stay quiet, I slid the book off of the shelf and held the back cover to the gap. I was blanketed in darkness except for the thin crack of light streaming in from behind the desk. My heart skipped a few beats at the sound of the door opening. There was a pause as I let out a silent cry, trying to keep quiet until the door partially closed. I lowered the book.

“She's not in here, and Patrick's not anywhere in here,” Dad barked. “Get out of my house.”

“I'm calling the police,” I heard Mom shout from down the hall.

“You're bluffing!” he jeered.

“GET OUT OF MY HOUSE! GET THE HELL OUT OF MY HOUSE!” I had never heard Dad yell that loud before. There was more silence until footsteps plodded down the hallway to the front door.

“You have a lovely home, Esquire,” Mr. Marsh sneered.

“OUT!” they screeched in unison. The front door slammed and Mom let out an exasperated sigh. The office door creaked open.

“Rowena?” My eyes burned at the sound of Dad's voice. I pushed the chair and slid out from beneath the desk. He loomed in the doorway with his arms opened. I lunged for him.

“It's okay,” he whispered to me, bowing his head. “It's okay, my love. It's all over.”

“Yeah, he's gone now,” Mom confirmed as she briskly strode down the hallway.

“I'll tell you this,” Dad continued as she put her arms around him, “they'll have to go through us to get to you. All of them.”

I just wanted to stay home that night. I was sure Grandma Slate would understand.


	16. The Scorpion's Nest

Vincent and I had biochemistry class and the accompanying laboratory together at ten o'clock on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday with an older friendly platinum blonde bespectacled woman named Rose McCarthy. On the first day of school, she asked us if we were together and I swore otherwise. She lightly chuckled at his blushing.

In my case, the class proceeded a two hour drawing class, which I had with Ivan. The lab was on Thursday right after lunch. I had a two hour break, calculus with Ivan, and lastly geography with both of them four days out of the week before we returned home. I promised to help Ivan with calculus so we often hung out together for several hours on Thursday. I needed to stay away from the case with Patrick for some time. I also needed to be with people I trusted after the kidnapping.

They both were appalled by the kidnapping, however I tiptoed my way around Sully and Victor's motive. They both promised to keep me company, especially since I still saw it every time I closed my eyes. Vincent confessed he still dreamed of machines hooked up all over his body. He had the most bizarre dreams then because of the combination of Fall of Mars and anesthesia, worse than the Exaltation of Saturn dreams. Ivan, on the other hand, had dreams of conversations with his father. He always asked about his bad heart and Commodore never answered.

The three of us congregated at lunch the week before Thanksgiving break where we decided to form our own club. We called ourselves Bob's Infidel Travelers, Chemists, Horrors, and Everything Serious: Mr. St. Vitus laughed out loud at that once we returned home to tell him. We invited anyone and everyone who experienced something horrible like us, be it something seemingly frivolous to others like a bad break up, or worse like a departed pet, friend, or family member. Our basis was sharing and possibly healing each other with our stories. Our slogan was “we're pushing it” because we figured we were indeed pushing well beyond the boundaries of a normal life. The three of us each had nicknames and titles: Ivan was Commodore Ivan the Terrible in honor of his father; Vincent was both Cousin Vinny and Dr. St. Vitus; and I was Aunt Anesthesia in honor of Patrick, Aunt Indigo, and Aunt Christina, but the two of them colloquially referred to me as Red-hot Rowena. Ivan came to meetings in Commodore Wilson's old Royal Air Force jacket whereas Vincent and I both wore our light gray biochemistry lab coats, and black rubber gloves, and our protective goggles either on our heads or around our necks. At one point, I slung the goggles over my shoulder because they steamed up whenever I put them on.

We congregated in Ivan's art history classroom every Tuesday at lunch by the discretion of his teacher Irina Kosachenko, a tall blonde Russian woman who also taught design and photography. For our first meeting, she helped us make flyers once winter term started in January. I felt eager to listen and learn a new perspective from someone, and of course, to share about the kidnapping and the verdict. I hoped to help other people as well as myself.

Mr. Marsh had fallen off the radar: I presumed he returned to Sacramento, but he never made note of it, nor did we hear any update on Patrick. We heard nothing from Alastair and we only knew Aunt Christina clung to life in a hospital somewhere in Redding.

The weekend before finals in the middle of December, I took a walk to Ivan and Vincent's houses. I crossed the street before I reached the house on the corner and continued on down the other side of the street until I reached Franklin. Mrs. Sorenson-Wilson sat on the front step wearing a fuchsia crushed velvet bathrobe, sipping a cup of coffee and reading the newspaper. The Christmas cacti next to her both had several buds but no blooms.

“Hello, Rowena, darling,” she greeted me with a smile. “How are you?”

“I'm doing alright. Is Ivan up?”

“Yes, he's across the street right now. I encouraged him to get out of the house for a bit. After two years, I have finally gathered the courage to give away Nick's things.”

She peered down at the Christmas cacti. I gaped at her.

“Even the cacti?”

“Just one of them, but yes, even the cactus,” she grimly echoed. “The one in front was his plant. I am giving it to either Sonia or Maya. I have no clue if Ivan told you, but we are thinking of moving.”

“Y-You are?”

“Yes, but not until Ivan finishes his two years here. We're thinking probably somewhere well north like the Oregon Coast where you lot went. He loved it up there, he wants to go to school up there. And yes, I am going with him. We'll find an apartment or at least a cute little house overlooking the ocean. He simply does not like the idea of me living alone…” Her voice trailed off as the St. Vituses' big truck hauled into the driveway across the street.

“Oh, there's Bob and Maya right now!”

Mr. St. Vitus climbed out of the truck wearing a black cloak, and matching trousers, and big black boots. He rounded the front hood of the truck to the passenger side to help Grandma Slate out of the truck. Mrs. Sorenson-Wilson handed me her coffee mug so as to pick up the one Christmas cactus and we crossed the street to greet them.

Grandma Slate wore a black cloche hat with a white ribbon bearing a little pink calavera and a blue rose over her right ear. She wore a fitted black dress with a white lace collar and hems and her scorpion pendant.

“Elka! Rowena! And a Christmas cactus!” Mr. St. Vitus' face lit up at the sight of us.

“Rowena was just wondering about Ivan,” she explained, embracing Grandma Slate, “I also wanted to give Maya the Christmas cactus.”

“Oh, no, Elka,” she brushed off, “that belonged to dear Nicholas.”

“No, I want you to have it,” Mrs. Sorenson-Wilson insisted. Grandma Slate closed her eyes, and took the pot, and embraced her once more. She never opened her eyes once until they let go of each other.

We filed into the house and the front hallway, which led to Vincent and Mr. and Mrs. St. Vitus' rooms, the guest bedroom, and the master bathroom. To the right was the den, followed by the dining room and the kitchen before looping around into the spacious, luxurious living room. The aroma of limes and avocados filled the air as we ambled down the hall together.

Ivan lay on the big black velvet couch with his legs outstretched to the opposite arm and his hands under the back of his head. He wore a white shirt with one button undone near his collar and black trousers accompanied with black and white pinstriped suspenders. Vincent reclined, wrapped in a gray plaid fleece blanket pulled up to his chin, in a black tall man chair next to the couch. They both lounged in the den watching _Roseanne_ on the little television on the wall closest to us.

Ivan pushed himself onto his elbows to greet me as Mrs. Sorenson-Wilson and Grandma Slate entered the kitchen.

“Is that a new look you're going for?” I gestured at the bare skin on his neck and chest.

“More or less,” he answered with a shy little smile and a shrug. “These were my dad's suspenders, too.”

Vincent shivered under the blanket.

“I'm so cold,” he noted.

“Well, it's freezing in here, that's why—” Mr. St. Vitus dialed up the thermostat on the wall. Ivan swung his legs around and patted the spot next to him. I sat down next to him, thinking the cushions were going to suck me in.

“Now you know why he likes to nap on this thing,” Ivan nodded at Vincent.

“Yeah, especially now—” He rolled over onto his back, revealing the popped collar on his shirt.

“Vincent's been kicking ass in his classes,” Mr. St. Vitus proudly announced as he strode into the kitchen.

“I was just going to ask,” I started, “you guys ready for finals?”

“I sure am,” Ivan promptly replied.

“I've been doing so well,” Vincent announced, “that if I ace all of them, I'll have the option to transfer to the pre-med programs either up in Berkeley or Klamath Falls next fall.”

“Where is that, anyway?” Ivan asked him.

“Oregon. Dad showed it to me in the atlas in the living room: it's on the eastern side of the Cascades, so I won't be anywhere near the coast. But I hear there are plenty of wild horses and volcanic stuff up there. If I do well, I'll be able to transfer further north, like to Portland.” He pulled his feet closer in towards him.

“So how's your aunt doing?” he reminded me.

“She had to be transferred to the intensive care unit in Redding,” I promptly replied. “Testing for Fall of Saturn takes a while, too, so we're still waiting to hear back from Dr. Dutch and Nurse Basil and then if prognosis is positive, they'll try to make some antidote.” At the same time, Aunt Christina had very little time to make progress. There was a possibility, a survival rate, but with each passing minute, I felt her chances withering away.

“Scorpion venom and the honey from a rare type of honeybee, that's right,” Vincent recalled.

“Scorpion venom mixed with nectar,” Grandma Slate suddenly spoke. She placed her hands around the base of the pot.

“Nectar?” Ivan echoed. She eagerly nodded.

“Remember, Vincent? Indigo mentioned it in _New Age Alchemy_. You have to be careful with it, because while Fall of Saturn is lethal, so is scorpion venom. It becomes even more potent with succulent nectar. It is either that cocktail, or the honey from the honeybee.”

The red flowers of the Christmas cactus were not yet in bloom. I wondered how long it would take Nurse Basil and the doctors in Redding to realize that very fact.

“You're not wearing your ring,” Ivan pointed out to Vincent, who lifted his hand to show his bare fingers.

“Yeah, I nearly stabbed myself in the eye with it the other night. So I took it off and put it in my pocket. Oh! Speaking of pockets—Ivan, do you have the—” He spun a little circle in the air with his index finger.

“I do!” He reached into his pocket for something and a tiny pearly white Buddha the size of my pinky, wrapped in a silk robe. His eyes were lightly shut and he wore a serene expression on his narrow face. His hands crossed in an “X” over his chest.

“May peace and balance be with you, my sweet friend,” Ivan blessed in a low voice.

“That's actually from both of us,” Vincent explained. “Mom took us to San Juan Bautista back in October and we went into this cool rock and mineral shop. They had angels and crosses but I spotted him sitting on the shelf all by itself. I told Ivan, 'dude, we should get that for Rowena. She might like a Buddha—'”

“And I do!” I proclaimed. I embraced Ivan and rested my head against his chest.

“I don't know what to say—I didn't get you guys anything,” I confessed, sitting upright.

“Oh, don't sweat it,” Ivan assured me. “It's not Christmas yet. You can give us something after New Year's, if you must.”

“Soup's on!” Mr. St. Vitus called out from the kitchen. “Creamy avocado soup with a twist of lime and just a hint of coriander. Rowena, Elka, you can have some if you'd like.”

I stayed for soup and _Singles_ on the television before Mrs. St. Vitus returned from a long day at the pharmacology laboratory in Salinas. She only wanted to take off her shoes and be with her little boy, so Ivan, Mrs. Sorenson-Wilson, and I all returned home. My parents and I had a dinner of pasta and tomato sauce and then watched _Saturday Night Live_ until Dad announced he had to finish his opening argument, leaving Mom and me to turn in after midnight.

The next day, as I tried to skim over the pages of my biochemistry book, I pictured Patrick under an overpass in downtown Sacramento, his clothes tattered, dirty, and soaking wet, bruised, and shivering from all the rain. I wanted to know why he escaped the halfway house, where he had a warm dry bed, a shower, and a roof over his head. At the same time, I wished he still stayed with us. The memories of Mr. Marsh chasing me into the house and the kidnapping were still fresh. It still felt as though I had a gun to my head even though it never truly happened. I finally set the book on my lap and rubbed my eyes.

I remembered my journal in my courier bag on my desk chair. Since graduating high school, I never had time to write. I took it and my Scorpion Pen out of the bag, and leaned back on the headboard and stroked the smooth black cover. I gingerly opened to the front page, dated four years ago. It felt so far away. I was still Red-hot Rowena, but I read the account of a stranger.

I picked up the pen and turned to a fresh page, past all of my Latin words and phrases. I started writing; I neglected to correct myself. I wrote about everything, from witnessing Patrick's beatings to the kidnapping, the point which tears began to fall. Victor and Sully's sweetness was all a sham, a mask, a decoy in order to take me away from my family. I filled out seven whole pages before leaning my head against the headboard. It was as if someone took a twenty pound anvil off of my shoulders.

The day after New Year's, we received an official letter from the county calling us to trial the week after Memorial Day in Salinas and also my final grades: I had A's in everything except for biochemistry and calculus, where I received high B's.

Ivan barely passed his calculus final, bringing his overall grade down to a dreadful sixty-nine percent, but everything else he finished out with a solid A. Vincent, who had calculus that winter, offered to join in helping him bring up his grade point average. Our future was up in the air: I hoped we went to school in the same area, or at least the same state.

I received a Christmas card from Fiona and Billy which had a photograph of them with Mrs. Grey in front of their house in New Hampshire, blanketed in a thick layer of white snow. I showed Ivan and Vincent the card and they both huddled underneath my serape blanket. Ashley sent me a card suggesting a meet-up for coffee some time in Portland.

On the last Friday of January, Mrs. Sorenson-Wilson informed me Ivan shut himself in his bedroom because it was Commodore Wilson's birthday. I understood his wish to be alone and drove Vincent to school. But come Monday, she told me he bunkered himself in his room all weekend with his drawing pad and his copy of _Live Through This_ , and yet he still felt unwilling to attend school.

I visited him two days before Valentine's Day, to find him at the kitchen table with a glass of orange juice. I asked how he was feeling and he burst into tears. He confessed while he missed him every day, the day before Commodore's birthday, he received a letter from the school telling him they were taking away most of his scholarship at the end of this term because of his calculus grade. He had no clue what to do after spring break. I could only let him bawl into my jacket sleeve. He also said he had been applying for a job since then and never heard a single call back from anyone. Mrs. Sorenson-Wilson finally applied for welfare because Commodore's veteran money began to dry up.

In the last week of March, after I took Vincent home after my chemistry final, I visited Ivan, who was tearful the whole time. He loved school, taking classes, meeting people, and learning new things about life. After spring break, we drove to school without him. Our club had to be shut down the first day of school because of his absence and the fact the first meeting only consisted of the four of us.

We all congregated together for Ivan's eighteenth birthday down at Fisherman's Wharf for clam chowder and crab cakes. He had that same blissful, peaceful expression on his face as Patrick on the Morro Bay trip. We went to the same place for Vincent's eighteenth birthday at the end of May, except we took a walk on the beach afterwards.

Ivan and I let the waters roll and foam over our lower legs. He gripped onto my shoulder as if the water was about to throw us onto our backs. I glanced up at his sweet round face. For a moment, I actually thought about kissing his soft silky skin and his lips, but our parents stood next to us.

That next week, Mom, Dad, Aunt Indigo, and I piled into the car and drove to Salinas. The jury only needed testimonies from Aunt Indigo and myself; Dr. Dutch and Nurse Basil remained at the hospital in Redding as Aunt Christina's condition deteriorated even more. Alastair now had a long salt and pepper beard down to his chest.

“Your Honor, the prosecution would like to call up my eldest sister Indigo Minerva Patterson to the stand,” Dad announced to Judge Ferreira.

“Granted,” he answered. Aunt Indigo's hair glistened under the bright white ceiling lights as she sank down in the chair behind the small black microphone. Dad slipped on his reading glasses and cleared his throat.

“Miss Patterson,” he started in a gentle but firm tone of voice, “you're the author of _New Age Alchemy_ , which is considered your life's work. Not everyone knows about it, so could you please tell the courtroom just that?”

Aunt Indigo shifted her weight in the rickety chair before speaking.

“ _New Age Alchemy_ ,” she started, “is a compilation of forty-two years worth of notes I took beginning from when I was twelve years old to when I was fifty-three, or rather when we dropped the bombs on Japan to the accident at Chernobyl. Next February marks ten years since I decided to piece it all together. I study biochemistry, flora and fauna, pathogens, nuclear science, and the 'earth's essence' if you will, and also astrobiology, life here on Earth as well as beyond because we have so much before our actions catch up with is. But by trade I'm an alchemist. I modernize medieval alchemy, the point of which is 'he who makes gold out of lead will cure all disease' and I've brought that concept into the world in the wake of mushroom clouds and radiation fires. I've other books to my name but it is without a doubt my magnum opus.”

Dad leaned against the edge of the table.

“I ask you about it,” he continued in that gentle voice, “because Christina Patterson was poisoned with a concoction known as Fall of Saturn, something lifted from your book. Could you elaborate what that is?”

“Fall of Saturn is one of four of what I call 'cardinal elixirs' because they correlate to the cardinal directions on a medicine wheel and a compass. Yellow for sunrise, red for midday, black for sunset, and white for the middle of the night. What makes those unique is their dual base, or two main ingredients as opposed to one. Fall of Saturn has a lead and iron base, making it highly poisonous. Its cousin, Fall of Mars, has a silver and ozone base. It's lethal in large amounts, especially upon exposure to the human epidermis.”

“Why would one take them if they're so toxic? Just out of curiosity.”

“Well, one would take Fall of Mars in lieu of traditional medicine if they were dying of cancer or suffering from severe insomnia. In small amounts, it puts an organism to sleep without killing them. Externally, it is horrendously corrosive and causes severe burns, similar to those caused by radiation. Fall of Saturn is used if the organism is considered a lost cause and they need to death with dignity. It was concocted a hundred years ago in New Zealand to euthanize patients of horrible shark bites. The intent was to go beyond the nature of hemlock as it kills slowly in the instance of a healthy organism. There, it first manifests as symptoms of the flu, before progressing into symptoms of lead poisoning, and then into selective organ failure. It's slow and progressive, beginning as mere annoyance to the most excruciating pain that cannot be numbed by anesthesia. Christina suffered a stroke and she's—falling off a cliff because Nurse Basil doesn't have the right type of scorpion or honeybee venom which are the only known antidotes. The scorpion venom needs to be delicately handled because it can kill, too. Dr. Dutch showed me the toxicology report and it said her lead and iron levels were—” She closed her eyes.

“Were what?” Dad sounded worried. She was silent for a long time squeaking out: “Off the charts.” Gasps erupted behind us. Mom clasped her hands to her mouth.

“So she was poisoned,” Dad concluded.

“She was poisoned,” Aunt Indigo echoed, “with a lethal dosage. Dr. Dutch said it's hardening her hepatic blood vessels. She could die any day.”

“Miss Patterson, it's funny you say that because—I spoke to Dr. Dutch just last night over the phone and—he said she suffered another massive stroke just this morning. They put her on heavy duty painkillers to keep her alive. She's in impossible pain and nothing is working no matter how much she begs for more.”

Aunt Indigo gaped at him.

“So if it doesn't kill her, the medicine will!” she exclaimed, her voice breaking. Murmurs and low voices emerged from behind Mom and me.

“Order! That's enough!” Judge Ferreira declared, banging his gavel. The voices died down as Aunt Indigo brushed away tears. I watched Dad bow his head and fold his arms over his chest.

“No more questions, Your Honor,” his voice broke with tears. Judge Ferreira kindly gestured for Aunt Indigo to return to her seat, but she rushed towards Dad to embrace him. Tears streamed down her face as he whispered something into her ear.

“Okay…” she squeaked out before returning to Mom and me. I stared past them at Alastair sneering at us. I wanted to run over there and break his neck. Judge Ferreira took out a tissue box from beneath the podium.

“Would you like a recess, Esquire?” he offered as Dad took one to dabble his eyes and nose.

“No,” he insisted, balling up the tissue in the palm of his hand. “The prosecution would like to call up my daughter Rowena Elizabeth Henrietta Patterson.”

“Granted.” I strode across the floor to the witness stand. The chair slightly creaked as I took my seat. All eyes were on me.

“Now… Rowena,” Dad started, sniffling. “You witnessed… Christina's, and mine and Indigo's nephew Patrick—your cousin—being beaten by the defendant, Alastair Ravens. Is that correct?”

“Yes,” I promptly replied. “I told you about him on the first day of my junior year and we decided to invite Patrick home that night, like a house warming party. I went over to the house down the street. I didn't want to touch the front door because it looked mildewy, like it was collapsing, so I went around back. I peered into the back window looking into Patrick's room. I watched him and Aunt Christina get into an argument and then Alastair came in, and—” I froze. The image haunted me more than the kidnapping.  
“And?” He dabbed his eyes again.

“—picked up Patrick's shoe and hit him on the back of the neck. Then I told you, and you and Mom asked me to go back over there and find evidence of it to verify that was happening. So I took my comb with me—”

Dad backed up and picked up a plastic bag with a red seal with my old white comb inside, still with the wad of Alastair's hair trapped in the teeth.

“—that comb, yes. I took it with me and placed it on the windowsill, and then I went around the side of the house to stay out of sight. It was at night and I was alone. Patrick opened the window and took it, and then I heard yelling. I couldn't hear what they were saying but then I heard some noises followed by a loud scream.”

“Alastair stabbed her,” Dad clarified, wiping his nose again.

“Yeah. She screamed out 'I'm bleeding!' and when they left for the hospital, Alastair threw the comb out the window. When the coast was clear, I took it home.”

“And then, you and Indigo were cleared to go into the house—in haz-mat suits—and found an empty medicine bottle on the nightstand of Alastair and Christina's bedroom. The lab tested it for Fall of Saturn, or at the very least lead. And the results came back positive.” He glared through angry tears at Alastair. “No more questions, Your Honor.”

“You may go sit down now, Miss Patterson,” Judge Ferreira gently coaxed me. I nodded my head as I returned to the bench. Dad dried his eyes once more before fixing his coat. He deeply inhaled through his nose before facing the jurors.

“Let the record show that—even though she was technically trespassing,” he announced to them, “Rowena witnessed the horrid and utterly inhumane treatment of her cousin, an instance enough to shake the composure of anyone. Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, Christina is living on borrowed time. When she dies, it will be considered first degree murder. He is guilty of domestic violence and child endangerment as Patrick was only fifteen then. So, until then—”

“Esquire,” Judge Ferreira stopped him in his tracks.

Dad whirled around as he scanned a laminated white piece of paper in hand with a concerned expression.

“This is a suicide note here,” he grimly announced, “from Christina.” Aunt Indigo began crying even more.

“Is—Is that new?” Dad stammered.

“I think so. Michael just give me this. Theodore Basil had it laminated and twice cleaned because her blood is toxic. Here—” He handed the piece of paper to Dad who put on his reading glasses and skimmed the paper. His expression remained the same, until at one point, his mouth dropped open.

“I can confirm,” Dad spoke in a grave voice, “this is my sister's handwriting. And—I'm assuming this is her blood. It's bizarre to think she'd write a note in this fashion, either. My sisters and I have always been resourceful. We grew up during World War II so we kept everything, from old appliances to pens and pencils.” He backed up and placed the piece of paper down on the table. He folded up his glasses and inserted them back in his coat pocket.

“Thank you, Your Honor,” he flatly said before returning to the jury. “She wrote a suicide note. You have reasonable doubt.” He returned to the plaintiff's table.

“That'll be it for today,” Judge Ferreira announced. “We'll return once the verdict is in.” He banged the gavel and Mom rushed towards Dad to hold him. Aunt Indigo and I followed to form a group hug.

“I'm so sorry, babe,” Mom whimpered to him.

For the next few weeks, we anxiously waited by the phone for a verdict. I supposed the jurors were waiting for Aunt Christina to die but we all knew Alastair was guilty. On the last day of the month, after breakfast, we heard a knock on the door. Mom answered to Dr. Dutch who had a solemn expression on his face. I was down the hall in front of the bathroom when I heard her cry out for Dad. I hurried down the hall.

“Christina Joanne Patterson was pronounced dead at seven minutes after six this morning,” he announced to Dad and me. I clasped my hands to my mouth to keep myself from crying out or throwing up.

“She wasn't even sixty yet,” Dad wept, holding Mom. “She was going to be fifty-nine on the first of August.”

“Theo and I determined her cause of death was a ruptured spleen caused by a severe overdose of fluids. Her entire body was swollen, waterlogged. When they took her to the mortuary, she had small black beads of liquid lead oozing out of her pores. Her body was resisting the very medicine she overdosed on.”

The three of us hugged each other before I sprinted into my room and closed the door. I never stepped back out until a couple of hours later when I walked to Ivan's house. I broke into a run in front of the house on the corner. I turned onto Franklin to see him on his back on the grass with his hands behind his head. I began to cry as I neared the yard.

“Ivan!” I shouted, my voice breaking. He lifted his head.

“Oh, hi, Rowena! How's—” His mouth dropped open when he noticed the tears in my eyes.

“Oh my God, what happened?” He sat upright as I opened my arms. I dove down and held him close.

“What happened?” he repeated.

“My Aunt Christina died,” I blurted out. “My aunt in the hospital and who was poisoned—” I let out a loud wail. Ivan squeezed me. I was unable to feel angry at Alastair. I only bowed my head and bawled into his warm, deep chest and he lay his head atop mine. His stomach was so soft and warm, like a little pillow. He pressed his thighs on either side of me, like he was protecting me.

“What happened?” I recognized Vincent's voice behind us.

“Aunt Christina died. The one who was poisoned.”

I raised my head at Vincent kneeling on the grass and beckoning me for a hug. I lunged forward and buried my face in his shirt which smelled of chili peppers and lavender; he gently rocked me. I gazed up at him as my eyes burned with tears.

“I love you guys,” I choked out. “I love you guys so much. You're—You're like my little brothers.”

“We love you, too.” Ivan scrambled onto his knees and hugged me from behind.

“You're like our big sister,” Vincent smartly retorted. I coughed twice and lay my head on his chest again.

“I don't want to make things worse,” Ivan began, “but I think I might go into the military.”

“You are?” I sniffled.

“Yeah. In fact, I was just thinking of walking down to Fisherman's Wharf and enlisting in the Air Force. I was watching the clouds earlier and I realized I want to be closer to the stars.”

“Go for it, man,” Vincent encouraged, “I'm sure your dad would love that.”

“But then—” I stammered, crying even more. “—we—wouldn't—see you—”

“I'd come home, though,” he gently assured me. “As long as another big war doesn't break out, I'd always come back home.”

I let out another loud sob. I needn't lose Ivan now, but what other choice did he have? They then helped me up and led me into the house, where I tearfully told Mrs. Sorenson-Wilson about Aunt Christina and she gave me a hug. We stayed in the living room for a bit before we drove down to Fisherman's Wharf to enlist Ivan in the Air Force. We only knew they were whisking him somewhere far from Monterey.

The next day, we were summoned to trial as the jury finally came to a verdict. I had butterflies in my stomach the whole time. I cried out all my anger the day before so I just blankly stared at Alastair, and yet at the same time, I felt a tiny ray of pity for him. Aunt Christina married him and he killed her. Patrick was still missing.

“Do we have a verdict?” Judge Ferreira asked the older woman standing at the end of the panel.

“On the count of first degree murder,” she began, “we find the defendant Alastair Peter Ravens—guilty.”

Mom wrapped her arms around me. Dad bowed his head.

“Mr. Ravens, first degree murder is punishable by death,” Judge Ferreira sternly announced, “I hereby sentence you to the electric chair. Take him away—” Two officers guided him away from the defendant table.

“As for the other side of this case, we'll presume tomorrow morning at nine o'clock,” he continued, banging the gavel. Dad gave Mom a big kiss. At the same time, I felt justice had not been served because Aunt Christina had to die. But, hopefully there would be justice for Patrick. I thought about justice for him upon picking up Aunt Indigo at the Airport the next day.

I downed a whole cup of coffee before we stepped into the courtroom. The whole room was silent as Judge Ferreira took his seat at the podium with a far more grave expression on his face. He picked up a piece of paper from the podium and bit his lower lip.

“I'm sorry to tell you this, Esquire,” he announced. “But there is no proof here that any of you are either related to or fit to care for Patrick Ravens.” Mom gasped.

“What!” Aunt Indigo snapped.

“But Christina's my sister!” Dad declared. “She was his legal guardian. Patrick is Alastair's nephew. Your Honor, I've filed several claims for us to be a foster family until he can get his life together. Sure, we're not directly related, but we're related by union.”

“The records show Isolabella Ravens—Patrick's mother—was only related to Alastair by marriage. After her mother died, Isolabella's father married Lorelei Silversmith who had Alastair. They're stepsiblings. He's Patrick's uncle only by marriage. Never mind the Patterson family isn't even related, but he's been living without any family. We're also unable to find any record of this part of the Patterson family name anywhere, not here in Monterey, not anywhere in California, nowhere. It's like this family never existed.”

I was stunned at that. The authority of the Orion Colony extended even further than space. They erased every record, which meant my parents, Aunt Indigo, and Aunt Christina were literally aliens.

“I—” Dad stammered. The entire courtroom fell more silent than a graveyard. “I—I don't even know what to say right now.”

“I don't, either,” Judge Ferreira confessed. “The only reasonable thing I can do is to dismiss your case. Patrick will have to fend for himself somehow. He's nearly twenty, anyway. He can vote, get a job, and get his license. I'm so sorry, Esquire.”

“So the Colony not only wipes your record clean in space but down here on Earth, too,” Aunt Indigo concluded as we stalked into the front lobby. “God, that makes me sick.”

“Does that mean _New Age Alchemy_ will probably be relegated to an anonymous realm?” I was worried. The thought of her life's work being without a name nauseated me.

“No, I don't think so. I guess it means when you look up my name in a file, it'll come up inconclusive,” she clarified. Dad shoved the door open for us. A familiar black car roared up to the curb. I lunged back to Mom and Aunt Indigo as the passenger door flung open. I recognized his black hair, now matted to his forehead, his swarthy complexion, and his mad scientist attire.

“Mark!” Dad exclaimed. “What are you doing here?”

“No time to explain!” he hoarsely shouted. “Get in! Quickly! Come on! Come on!”

Mom, Dad, and Aunt Indigo dove into the back seat and I scrambled into the front next to him. He floored it before either of us buckled our seatbelts. Mark bounded onto the freeway back to Monterey. We wove in and out of all the cars all the way back home: I was afraid of seeing police lights behind us. Or wiping out. Mark breathed a loud sigh: he was out of breath.

“Mark, where are we going?” Mom demanded. I clung to the safety handle over my head as.

“Your house,” he breathlessly told us. “Just let me catch my breath and I'll explain—” He darted onto the first offramp. One car honked at us as we screeched into town and then onto Herrmann Street.

“Okay, so I've been following this case since I heard Big Daddy Patterson was taking it on and—”

“Power lines! POWER LINES!” Dad shouted. Mark swerved to miss a power pole on the corner on my side.

“It was tricky to find anything because literally nobody is talking about it. But I've been peeking into the house and trying to dig up information about it. It's been difficult, but people only seem to care about Christina and not Patrick.”

“Annoyingly,” I grumbled, feeling divided as we shot through a yellow light.

“I tried to do amateur investigative journalism. Take the power into my hands, because I found out Patrick was missing, and—”  
“MARK!” Aunt Indigo and Mom shrieked in unison. He swerved to miss a woman and a dog about to cross the street, and then returned just in time to miss the car in the opposite lane.

“So earlier I went to the house to see if Patrick was there, because you never know. He could be here in Monterey and no one would know it. But he's not, as far as I can tell. Regardless, he wasn't there but Alastair was.”

“Oh, Jesus,” Mom groaned.

“Already?” Aunt Indigo shrieked.

“Yeah, I don't get it, either. My guess is he broke out of jail and snuck back because he was still in his orange pajamas. Who knows how he got back there. He was in that filthy armchair and I said 'what are you doing here?' And he saw me and started spewing filth and foul at me, like 'I should ask you the same thing, you little punk! I live here!' And I said, 'like bloody hell you do! The cops are looking for you!' So, he punches me, right in the stomach. That's why I can't hardly breathe. But I kicked him right in the crotch and he falls to the floor and—” He bit his lip as we slowed at the sight of the school zone signs.

“And what?” Mom demanded. “Mark?”

“I—” he started. He sighed through his nose. “I—might've—kicked him in the head a few times.” We gasped in unison.

“Mark! That's battery!” Dad bellowed as we wound past the school.

“Well, he was about to grab my ankles! What was I supposed to do, Mr. Patterson? I'm wearing Chuck Taylors—I may as well have kicked him with my bare feet. When I fled the house and rushed to the courthouse as quickly as I could, he followed me so I drove around a bit to lose him. He thinks you guys are still at the courthouse, so—I'm taking you home.”

“But wait, wouldn't he follow us home?” I demanded, my heart hammering inside my chest.

“He's not,” Mark assured me as we turned onto Pacific Street.

“He's not?”

“Nope. For starters, Alastair has never met me. For all he knows, I'm just some snot nosed kid who broke into his house. Second, Rowena, you've been in that house. I was lurking over on the next block when you and Aunt Indigo went in there that day and I peeked in when the coast was clear. There are no electronics in there.”

“The phone was off the hook!” I recalled.

“Right! He's not calling the police because of that and because he broke out of jail. But, regardless, the only contact he has with the outside world is through newspaper or through you, Rowena. I'd think they used Patrick as a middle man. The paper comes weekly, but no one's talking and Patrick's not here. But to be safe, we're taking a detour so we'll bypass the house. I should probably hide this car, too.”

“Wait a minute, he started following you?” Mom recalled, mortified, as Mark roared onto Wainwright. “After you kicked him in the head?”

“Yeah, but I rung his bell pretty good, though. If I wore my big black boots, I probably would've smashed his skull. I did break one of his teeth, though, like I saw him spit out a tooth when I looked in the mirror.”

We turned onto Monroe and the four of us peered out the back window at the house on the corner, now deserted. Mark bounded into our driveway and we all sprinted into the house. He needed to hide and our car was still over in Salinas. Something told me it was all downhill from there.


	17. The Nurse Who Loved Chiles

It would be another two days until we picked up the car. We never had a memorial for Aunt Christina because of the danger of Alastair tracking us down and Nurse Basil said her corpse was too toxic.

Mark hid his car down by Fisherman's Wharf far enough away from the high tide before returning to the house to stay in our guest room. Mom and Dad told me to stay home for the next month as Ivan and Vincent could be put in peril. Whenever we drove into town, we took Wainwright to bypass the house. Mom finally allowed me to go to their houses, telling me to take that same way on the last Saturday of August.

There was a stack of folded boxes underneath the tree in the St. Vituses' yard. Vincent briskly strode out to the mailbox wearing only black jeans and black Chuck Taylors. His belly had trimmed down but his face was still quite round.

“Hey, you know vampires shouldn't go out in the sunlight,” I teased. He showed me a crooked smile as I came closer.

“Who told you I was a vampire?” he cracked as he peeked inside the mailbox.

“I thought you were this whole time because your skin's like bone china,” I continued.

“Today's one of those days where wearing a shirt was too much,” he showed me a sly little smile. “So how've you been? I haven't seen you in a while.”

“Oh, you know—taking time to myself and everything. Where's Ivan at?”

“He and his mom went down to Santa Maria and they should be back in a couple of hours. He's being deployed on Tuesday. He's going to—I still can't believe it, either—Lebanon.” I clasped my hands to my mouth. He nodded and then hugged me.

“I know. I miss him already.” I stepped back to examine his flattening belly.

“Sixteen pounds. Thank Mom for that—it's all the chile peppers and fresh fruit she's been giving me.”

I peered at the pile of flattened boxes on the grass. “What's with all the boxes?”

“I was going to tell you the next time we saw each other—”

“Oh, no,” I figured it out. “Don't tell me you guys are moving.” He sadly nodded.

“I'm being transferred to Klamath, and my dad's pharmacy and my mom's lab are moving to Medford, about an hour from me. If you'd like to be up there with us, get a move on now. I think the school up there is just engineering, your life sciences, and medicine, though, I don't believe they have art. There's probably an art school in either Medford or Ashland. But even then, we wouldn't see each other as much. I was going to tell you sooner but the first day of school for me is September 30. It happened all so fast. My parents and I all got letters in the mail back around the fourth of July saying we're all going to Oregon. We went up there last week to visit and I found an apartment in this big black and white apartment complex a few blocks from school. We put the down payment on it, which means I have to be up there by Labor Day.”

Tears brimmed my eyes. I tightly hugged him.

“Hey—Hey, Rowena—listen, it's okay. Look at it this way: it's better I said this now while we're still here instead of you coming to two empty houses when school starts again. Come on—Dad and Grandma Slate will both be here any second and the last time she saw me shirtless, she couldn't keep her hands off my love handles.”

I invited Ivan and Vincent to spend the night at our house. I offered one of them to join me in my room but they wanted me to have privacy, so they slept head to toe in the guest bedroom. I awoke in the middle of the night to Ivan saying something to Vincent, followed by the bed springs creaking and a loud _thump_ on the floor. I got up the next morning to Dad and the two of them playing bridge with wooden black dominoes with bright crimson pips.

Ivan looked strange without his dark curls, now reduced to a short nappy pile atop his head. He wore a clean white Air Force shirt with a small metal name tag above his heart. Vincent wore a black polo shirt and his hair was an absolute mess.

“Did one of you fall off the bed last night?” I asked them as they both took swigs of coffee in unison.

“Yeah, that was me,” Vincent flatly replied, glaring at Ivan.

“Well, you were out like a light,” he scoffed, “you kept kicking me in the face and you rolled over. I said, 'Vincent, you're going to fall off—' and then you did. You never woke up.”

“When I did, I was like, 'Ivan, why am I on the floor?' and he goes, 'I tried to tell you! You never woke up!' Whatever—”

Dad chuckled at them before showing me a warm smile. “Good morning, my love.”

“Good morning. Where's Mom?”

“She had to run to the market real quick. Help yourself to some coffee.”

As I poured myself a cup with one of the mugs from the cupboard, Dad spoke again.

“So when do you leave, Ivan?”

“In the wee hours of Tuesday morning. Mom's taking me out to dinner tonight and then after I leave, she's selling the house. She's going to either Portland, or Vancouver, or back to Nevada. She hasn't decided yet.”

“All of you are leaving?” Dad was stunned.

“Yeah, we all gotta be up in Oregon by next Friday,” Vincent joined in.

“What's Grandma Slate going to do?” I wondered aloud as I poured the cream into my cup of coffee.

“She'll visit,” he assured me. “Just not as much. It'll take a bit to fly from Albuquerque to Portland, and that flight costs more than the one going here, and it's a good drive down the Willamette Valley to Medford. She _is_ seventy-seven now.”

“She's seventy-seven, seriously?”

“Yeah, I know! I hope I'm that hot by the time I'm that age.”

I smiled as I took a sip of coffee. I started to miss all of Vincent's quips and Ivan's relaxed nature. They really felt like kid brothers to me. I wanted some more time with them. I knew the Greys and the Hansens forever and yet I let them go to New Hampshire and Portland, but I wanted the Wilsons and the St. Vituses to stay with me.

They stayed for the rest of the morning until Ivan said he promised Mrs. Sorenson-Wilson he'd be home by three and so we all gave him the biggest hug. I lay my head against his chest to hear his heartbeat one last time before he strode down the driveway to the sidewalk. I watched him all the way to the corner and kept watching even after he disappeared around the corner. I did the exact same for Vincent when he went home.

During September, Mom worked long hours on a new manuscript and Dad kept scratching his head as to why we were refused caring for Patrick. Maybe there was a feud between Earth and the Colony, one nobody knew about.

I drove to school on the first day alone; I nearly turned down Franklin but I caught myself at the corner. I didn't have to do that anymore. But I decided to drive by on the way home.

I had one more year at the community college and perhaps Monterey itself. Santa Cruz rejected me twice and all of my friends were all gone: I had no clue what happened to Mark after he left the house once the coast was clear. I had always been friendly towards my classmates and my teachers, but I could never befriend them. I sat alone at one of the tables at lunch the first day.

I spent human anatomy class thinking about Vincent. I wondered how Klamath Falls was fairing for him as my teacher Tim Thompson announced we'd work with human cadavers the next week. I flashed back on Dr. Dutch's description of Aunt Christina's corpse: heavy, swollen, and with beads of liquid lead oozing from her pores.

It worsened with the fact the entire morgue reeked of chemicals. The corpse even resembled Aunt Christina with darkened hair from death. I sank the scalpel into the cadaver's chest and guided the blade down so as to peer inside the chest cavity. I nearly vomited right there.

Every other day for the next couple of months, I took Franklin on the way home to examine the vacant houses until one day before Christmas break when I parked in front of the St. Vitus house. I switched off the engine and gazed at the sealed, darkened windows and door. I kept expecting Vincent or his parents to greet me at the curb. I expected Ivan or Mrs. Sorenson-Wilson to greet me from their house across the street.

I returned to the steering wheel and closed my eyes. Everyone I knew was gone. Monterey felt like a replica of my memories. Three men wanted to kill me. I curled my fingers around brim of the steering wheel.

I wanted a hug from Ivan and the St. Vituses. I wanted to hear Mrs. Sorenson-Wilson call me “darling” again. I also wanted to hear another one of Commodore Wilson's tales.

I felt the tears well up. I folded my arms atop the steering wheel and bowed my head. I was alone on the street so I sobbed as loud as I could into my sleeve. My cries filled the cab of the truck. My body violently trembled as everything I withheld from Ivan and Vincent ran through my brain at lightning speed. I wished I was with the cadavers in the morgue. I wished I was dead. I was unafraid to die right there.

I wiped my face with my sleeve. My chest heaved as I struggled to catch my breath. It felt like I swallowed a jagged rock which lodged into my throat. Every inch of my body ached as I reached over to the glove compartment for something to wipe my face. I took out a folded napkin to dab my eyes and blow my nose. I leaned back against the seat and closed my eyes. I thought about Mom, Dad, and Aunt Indigo and simultaneously, I thought about nothing. I stared out the windshield for some time before turning the ignition key and returned home.

I parked the driveway and climbed out of the truck with my courier bag over my shoulder. I tried to push the door open but it never budged. I lightly knocked on the panel. The deadbolt made a loud _click_ and the door opened to reveal Aunt Indigo's terrified face.

“It's just Rowena, Matt,” she called out behind her. I entered the house and she locked the door behind me. Mom sat by the telephone with her hands folded in her lap. Dad came out of the dining room with a glass of red wine in hand and a terrified expression on his face.

“What's going on?” I demanded. He fetched up a sigh as he noticed my tearstained face.

“We have to leave,” he solemnly explained. “The Colony heard about Christina's death and called us, out of the blue. I have no idea how they got our number. They told us her death was a cruel act of cowardice. We let her die. So we need to be out of Monterey by next September or they're shuttling us out to space for 'retraining'. None of us want that.”

“Why next September?” I persisted.

“To give us time to look around for another place to stay,” Mom joined in. “The problem is we really don't know anywhere else to go to feel safe so—” She bit her lower lip. Her face turned bright pink as she started to weep. “—I called the head office of an institution up in Portland. We're seeking asylum in an unmarked house near Mount Hood.”

“Feel safe? I don't understand.”

“The Colony is ruthless,” Aunt Indigo warned. “It's like your dad said that one time: it's a scarlet letter. We didn't kill Christina per se, but they think we let her die and now we're paying the price.”

“Does this mean I have to seek asylum?”

“No,” Mom tearfully answered. “You're not from the Colony. After we leave, this house is all yours. But you're forbidden from talking about us and you have to see us off. If you must, say we had to indefinitely disappear.”

“Is Aunt Indigo coming with?” I asked in a small voice.

“Not as far as they're concerned, no,” she coldly replied. “I'm done with that spiteful hive. They've ruined so many lives since Ed Manzarek died. Now they're taking my little brother and his wife away from me. They'll to have to turn the whole city of Portland sideways to find me. I'll concoct something to make Mount Hood blow its top to chase their blistering corpses back to Pluto and then break you two out of there if I have to.”

“So you're going to finish out school here,” Dad assured me, brushing away a tear. “And whatever you do next is by your own discretion. I feel I failed as a parent. The Colony says I failed to protect Christina and my daughter.”

“No,” I insisted. “You didn't fail. You did everything you could. I have to be alone like you were, but I don't have the Colony breathing down my neck. I look forward to when they burn into the void of space. Matthew Bernard Patterson, you didn't fail as a parent, or a sibling. Not once.”

Dad rubbed his eyes and flung his arms around me and I relished in the smell of his cologne.

Those last few months there in Monterey were full of hugs, especially when I graduated with honors and without a new school to go to in June. We kept the whole house intact as we prepared to fly up to Portland; they only needed themselves in asylum. Mom even gave me her typewriter.

Dad filed the paperwork to hand the bank accounts over to me, including the bank card. He told me the first thing to buy when I came home was a new padlock for the shed outside as the old one rusted too much. He decided to store his suits and nice clothes in their bedroom closet and suggested to me that, should I meet someone or see Ivan or Vincent again, they could have his clothes.

It was so bizarre seeing him drive to the Airport that Thursday morning and take his seat in the airplane wearing a plain white shirt; he and Mom held hands the whole flight. She gave me the keys to the car and I stuffed them into my purse.

Wispy gray clouds accumulated in the sky as we approached downtown Portland. Mount Hood jutted from the frigid earth in a tall jagged point blanketed in white snow, colder and ghostlier than in Aunt Indigo's Polaroid. Tears fell as we touched down on the tarmac. I walked with them to the front doors where two short squat redheaded women wearing navy blue coats waited for them.

I took one last whiff of Mom's perfume as she held me close. Dad pressed my head to his heaving chest.

“Go home,” he commanded in a low, trembling voice, “and dream of gray and brown eyes.”

He brushed away a tear as he set his arm over Mom's shoulders. The two women guided them out to a black van parked at the curb. I watched them gingerly climb into the wayback; Dad hesitated for a few more seconds to take one last look at me before bowing his head and climbing inside. The two women closed the doors and nodded at me before heading to the cab.

I was without a car, Aunt Indigo disappeared, I had no idea where the Hansens lived, the next flight back to Monterey left in a couple of days, and I had no a clue where was the closest hotel. I felt like a lost child, until I remembered Vincent was down in Klamath Falls. Perhaps I could catch the next train and visit him.

I watched Mount Hood loom on the horizon as the train zipped down to Salem. I foresaw myself living in Portland with my future husband and children. The only future I saw for my children was one of deception but I hoped they gained enough sense to lift the veil, and dig beneath the clouds, and that they never hit their heads on the way down. I leaned my head back and stared out the window.

Rain fell in big fat droplets against the window upon leaving the Portland area. The tall trees and bright green grasses lining the railway made me think of Aunt Indigo. I watched the damp, green grasslands whiz past all the way down the Willamette Valley. More clouds piled into a massive bank as we approached the Cascades.

The trees carried a thick blanket of pure white snow underneath towering cold stone cliffs. I stared up at the frigid white clouds overhead, ready to dump even more snow. The cliffs revealed a vast valley floor lined with snow covered black pine trees. Three enormous near perfect points jutted up from the earth. A long high ridge of black jagged rock and three black glassy pools of water stood opposite the nearest point.

“What are those?” a little boy in front of me asked aloud.

“Those are the Three Sisters, son. They're volcanoes. The furthest one is extinct. It won't ever erupt again. The one in the middle is dormant. It could erupt again at some point in a million years. The nearest one is active. But I don't think that one will erupt any time soon, though.”

The Three Sisters! I pictured Ivan sitting atop the furthest point, Vincent on the one in the middle, and I was on the nearest one. I also pictured Dad on the middle point, Aunt Christina on the furthest point, and Aunt Indigo on the one closest to us.

“What's that other one right there?” the boy continued. “Is that a volcano?”

“It is! That's Broken Top. He, like Mount Bachelor which we're passing by right now, stands alone from the Sisters.”

I lay my head back right as more trees pointed up from the edge of the railway, blocking the view of the volcanoes. The train continued to gently sway all the way to the eastern side, where the snow level broke off prior to the base of the mountains. The pitch black pine trees mixed in with barren trees and scraggly branches. They zipped by in a blur all the way to Chemult.

I wanted my parents back. I knew I needed to stare at the world in the face, but I wanted to be in my daddy's arms again, to read something Mom wrote, and to have Aunt Indigo and Aunt Christina back. There was so much to Christina I wanted to know more about: I failed to get to know her. I only crossed paths with her for a moment and it was not enough. My parents never failed me but I failed Aunt Christina and Patrick. How I itched to speak to him.  
As we stopped in Chemult, I decided on telling Vincent about Patrick. He needed to know, especially since we were the only ones left. I also considered asking if I could stay with him for a bit as I wanted company.

Little white flurries floated down from the darkening sky. The conductor informed me we would arrive in Klamath Falls in about an hour. I nodded in affirmation as it became all too real.

Vincent was my last hope for warmth and close contact. I hoped he let me stay with him, even if it was just for the weekend.

The trees gave way to desert dotted with black scraggly bushes. I wanted to fly out of my seat and bury myself underneath a bush. I wanted to burrow into the windswept sand like a scorpion and become part of the earth.

The train wound along the eastern edge of a vast partially frozen pitch black lake. A two lane highway paralleled the railroad to my left turned with us away from the lake into the north end of Klamath Falls. I slung my purse over my shoulder as we slowed down at the sight of a few small houses and a pile of mulch. I watched the wilderness morph into low hills covered in dark shrubs and pine trees. Cute quiet little houses interwoven with green patches of grass and low hanging trees were nestled back from the road; at one point, I spotted a tall brick building with white trimming and a black roof up the street when we crossed a bridge. I knew that was Vincent's apartment complex.

The train station was in the midst of quiet neighborhoods buttoning up for the night. I stumbled towards the front of the car as we screeched to a stop.

I bounded down the stairs into the chilly early evening. I adjusted my purse strap as I sprinted off the platform towards the bus idling at the far end of the parking lot. My Chuck Taylors padded on the damp black pavement and the sidewalk. The young redheaded bus driver patiently awaited at the wheel under the white lights lining the ceiling. She wore a bright blue windbreaker over a white polo shirt and a big onyx ring on her right index finger. She smiled at me as I reached the bus.

“Do you know of any big black and white apartment complexes around here?” I breathlessly asked her.

“Black and white apartment complex?” she echoed in a strong voice.

“Yeah, like black and white—over brick. Sorry, I'm out of breath—”

“Brick! Oh, that's Blackburn Manor on the corner of Eldorado and Esplanade. I'm going up there, so come aboard.” I thanked her as I climbed up the metal steps, paid the fifty cent fare, and collapsed into the nearest dark gray seat below one of the long windows. I let out a long low sigh as an older man climbed aboard and took the seat across from me. The folded doors squeaked shut and the bus lumbered down the side street. We hung a right onto another side street with three streetlamps starting to flicker on.

“So where you guys from?” she spoke.

“Beautiful Elko, Nevada,” the man across from me promptly replied. “I'm here visiting my son and my daughter in law. They're taking me to Bend this weekend to go skiing.”

“I'm from beautiful Monterey,” I followed suit. “I'm here visiting my best friend. I haven't seen him in a while.”

“Aw, that's so sweet,” the driver remarked as we made another right.

“I married my best friend,” the man boasted with a warm smile.

“Oh, I love stories like that.” She accelerated forward into the deserted street and through an intersection, then up a hill before hanging a left. “Two friends who've been together forever and one day, they decide to get married. Something endearing about that—” Her voice trailed off as we slowed to a stop. She pulled the brake and smiled at me in her mirror.

“Eldorado and Esplanade,” she announced, pressing a button to open the doors.

“Already? That was quick.” I ambled towards the stairs.

“It's right back there,” she advised me, pointing behind her, “you'll know it when you see it.”

I thanked her as I descended the stairs and came to face to face with a patch of grass stretched under a handful of low hanging oak trees. I stared up at the inky black sky as I pulled my hood over my head as the bus roared up the street. I reached the corner and stared straight across the intersection to the three story brick building lit up with two porchlights.

I peered both ways before darting over to the opposite corner. A raindrop fell on top of my head as soon as I reached the tall pine tree over a rectangular patch of dirt. An older slender copper haired woman in an olive green cardigan gently guided a white terrier dog into a side door. I jogged up to her and lightly tapped on her shoulder before she opened the big white wooden French style door.

“Hi, have you seen a tall boy around here? I think he lives here? He's tall, real chubby, got thick black hair—I'm his best friend and I'm just visiting.”

“Oh, Vincent!” she declared, reaching down to pick up her dog. A blast of warm air greeted us through the open door. “Room Eight. Up the stairs here.”

I thanked her as the door shut behind me. She strode down the low warmly lit hallway next to me and disappeared into the room at the end. A carpeted stairwell rose up to a landing with two white wooden doors. The one facing the stairs had a bronze number 8 next to the door frame. I gripped onto the banister while ascending the stairs. I yanked off my hood as I gently knocked on the door.

There was a brief pause, then Vincent opened the door. He wore a black button up knit sweatshirt and pajama bottoms. His black hair twirled into wet glistening curls over his face, now much rounder and with a warmer, healthier rosy bloom than the year before. His body had grown heavier: his belly and his hips were as round as ever.

“Oh, my God, Rowena! How are you?”

“Not good,” I confessed as we hugged each other. “May I please come in?” He raised his eyebrows and stepped aside.

“Of course. I got home about an hour ago, but yes, yes, come on in.”

I entered his cozy apartment and he shut the door behind me. The vast ceiling was illuminated by a bright yellow overhead light. The white wall over his queen sized bed tucked in the corner next to me had a collage of a red flame, a green fern leaf, a blue water droplet, and a yellow spiral, a black and white photograph of himself with his parents and Grandma Slate, a black and white pinstriped circular wall clock, and a panoramic photograph of Albuquerque over a big heavy wooden desk, which was accompanied with a sleek spindly black chair with a plush oxblood red cushion. The bed had a big black headboard, two fluffy pillows, and a black, white, and red quilt. Two sliding windows lined with white lace curtains overlooked into the street on the opposite wall. Next to that was a closet door and a black dresser with a little blocky television on top. He stepped into the little kitchen to my right, his bare feet heavily padding on the linoleum floor. I noticed the bathroom door in front of him.

“Would you like something to drink?” he offered me. “Mom, Dad, and I went shopping at Fred Meyer today for groceries and some stuff for school. This last year I really got into iced coffee.”

“Oh, yes, please.” I slung my purse off my shoulder and rested it on top of the quilt. He opened the cream colored refrigerator door for an iced coffee: he had a Mother Love Bone, Green River, and Malfunkshun magnets, all the size of sticks of butter, and a glittery peacock magnet right smack in the middle of the door. He returned to me with a glass bottle of light brown vanilla flavored coffee. I sat down at the foot of the bed and he took the chair at the desk.

“So, what happened? What brings you here to my humble abode?”

I nibbled on my bottom lip. I wanted to tell him the whole, bare naked truth. But it would be a break of a promise to Mom.

“My parents,” I cautiously began, “got into legal trouble and they had to vanish. Aunt Indigo was involved, so she went with.”

“Holy shit, seriously?” he gaped at me in shock. I solemnly nodded my head.

“Yeah. I just got here from Portland on the train. It's just—horrible. I'm forbidden from going into it, too. I'm also here because—well, I haven't seen you in a while.”

His face turned even rosier as he showed me another smile. I dropped my gaze down to his big waist and I wanted to hug him.

“Almost thirty pounds,” he gently patted his belly. “I go to my parents' house every other Saturday. I eat handsomely here, too.”

I tilted my head to the side. I had always loved his mind, but I never realized how much I missed his soft rosy face and he had a beautiful body. I loved both him and Ivan, but there was something sweet about Vincent. I was exhausted by everything, but I had to be gentle to my best friend.

“Vincent, I have to tell you something,” I started. He raised his eyebrows. “After all that's happened, I—just want something soft and cuddly next to me. Ivan's not here and I'm alone now. I want some softness, protection. I—”

I froze, searching for the right words. “—I want a teddy bear.”

He stared at me with those big brown eyes, wide with shock. The blush in his face momentarily faded but returned as he figured out what I meant by that. The chair quietly creaked as he heavily slid next to me on the edge of the bed.

“I'll be your teddy bear. This bed is so warm,” he gently patted the top of the quilt, “and this is the god of all quilts. I also like to sleep with a sheet and a couple of blankets. I'll keep you warm no matter what.”

“I don't have my pajamas, though,” I pointed out.

“That's okay. You can sleep in one of my shirts.”

“No toothbrush or toothpaste.”

“Spares of both in the bathroom.”

“I need a shower.”

“Clean towels are in the closet and you can use my shampoo. It smells like fresh powder.”

“You have an answer for everything, don't you?” I cracked.

“Being in pre-med will do that to a guy,” he retorted with a slight wink. “By the way, did you eat yet? My parents took me out to dinner so I'm full, but I can make you something, though.”

“Not since about this morning, no,” I confessed, “I'd love something to eat.”

He strolled into the kitchen. I heard him open the refrigerator door. “I don't know if you like flautas or not, but I brought a couple extras home from the restaurant and you can have those if you'd like. They're chicken.”

“Oh, yes, please!”

He took something out from the second shelf and closed the door with his hip before disappearing behind the wall. There was a brief pause before he spoke up again. “Now, I have to ask after I wasn't asked this for five years. Red or green?”

He stepped out from behind the wall holding up two small glass jars: the one in his left hand had chopped red chile peppers; the one in his right had green peppers. “Red—or green? Or both? It's alright if you don't want any.”

“No, no, I'll have both.”

“Good choice. Christmas is my favorite holiday.” He disappeared behind the wall once again. Silverware lightly tinkled and a drawer closed. “I'll give you a little spoonful of each because these are really good flautas and I want you to taste them. The rice and beans are delicious, too.” He returned with a black plate with two massive flautas, both topped with a dollop of sour cream and lightly sprinkled with the finely chopped chile peppers, next to patches of Spanish rice and refried beans, and a silver fork.

“I have to ask, why you do even have leftovers?”

“Right, because I've never met a piece of food I didn't reconcile with,” he sarcastically replied with a smirk and sat down next to me on the bed. “I couldn't finish them because they were simply too big.”

The chicken inside the flautas was tender with just the right amount of spice. The green chile peppers reminded me of a sweet onion, whereas the red ones tasted like bell peppers with a little spicy aftertaste. The rice were lovely but the beans were a bit salty. Regardless, I ate everything on the plate.

He offered to take my plate into the kitchen so I could untie my shoes and removed my jacket. I strode to the closet door for one of the clean towels and a washcloth on the shelf. I headed into the cozy bathroom and shut the door. I slung the towel over the rung in front of me and took off my clothes. I turned the dials of the shower to temper the water before climbing inside.

It was blissful to take a shower after such a long day. I washed myself down with the bar soap and scrubbed my hair with the soft smelling bottle of shampoo at the bottom of the shower. I climbed out feeling soft and clean. I hastily dried off before putting my underwear back on, wrapping the towel around me, and switching off the light.

Careful not to open the towel, I strode through the kitchen to the front room. Vincent reclined on the closest edge of the bed with his legs outstretched and his hands folded over his chest, watching the little television. He smiled at me as I entered the room. “Need a shirt?”

I nodded, and he swung his legs around and stepped to the dresser. He picked a big navy blue shirt from the top drawer.

“Here—this doesn't fit me anymore but it's big enough. You can have it.” I put the shirt on in the kitchen. I kept the towel around my hips as I returned to the front room.

“Do you have any extra pajama pants?”

“I don't, no. I'd rather you didn't sleep with pajama pants anyways. I can see you getting too hot.”

Reluctantly, I unraveled the towel and revealed my bare legs; the bottom of the shirt brushed the top of my thighs. He inched closer to the wall and patted on the quilt. I draped the towel over the head of the chair and climbed onto the bed next to him.

“So what are we watching?” I inquiringly asked him.

“I'm not sure,” he confessed, “I was flipping through the channels and I stopped on Cartoon Network.”

“Never heard of it. Is it new?”

“Yeah, it's about five years old. I never told you this but I love cartoons. I like Cartoon Network, and Nickelodeon, and whatever has _Looney Tunes_ and _Ren and Stimpy_. It's Friday night, so I'm up for anything. You heard Princess Di died, right?”

“I did, yes! I can't believe it, either.”

We watched a cartoon movie that we loved regardless of never finding out the name. At that point, at a quarter to ten, my eyelids grew heavy and we turned in for the night. Vincent clicked off the television and climbed off the bed to brush his teeth. I lay on the quilt with my arms relaxed down by my sides. I swore it was only a minute before I felt him tap the back of my right hand. I opened my eyes to two big brown spots staring back at me.

“I want to live here with you,” I blurted out.

“You want to—live—here?” he stammered, taken aback.

“Yes. I want to be here. With you. My best friend.”

He nervously swallowed. I knew that was too much. He licked his bottom lip before stepping towards the closet. He stood there in front of the door. I watched him bow his head before turning back around to face me. I lifted myself up onto my elbows.

“Rowena—please don't get me wrong. I'm being completely honest with you.”

“Go on,” I gently coaxed him. He slid his thumbs inside the waistband of his pajama bottoms and pushed down so the waistband hugged his hips. He slowly unbuttoned his shirt from the collar down, gradually showing the snowy white skin on his chest and then his round belly. He stood before me with his open shirt. I had never seen him this lovely.

“I know you've seen me shirtless but this is so alien to me,” he rambled. “I don't even know how to feel about this—”

“Your body is beautiful,” I told him in a low voice. “So soft… just like a big teddy bear. Or this pillow right here.” I gestured for him to come to me. “Come to bed. Let me love you.”

He stripped his shirt off all the way; he had little pink streaks around his hips. He kept his pajama bottoms on as he climbed into bed and lay flat on his back. I gingerly inched closer to his bare chest.

“It's okay—” he breathed. “Come closer.” I carefully lifted my hand over his bare chest before dropping my fingers onto his skin. It was like touching silk. I lay my head on his chest to hear his heartbeat and he held me close.

“Vincent, can I ask you something?”

“You're my best friend, Rowena,” he answered in a low voice. “You can ask me anything.”

I gazed right into his eyes. “Now forgive me if this has been overdone but… I want to know how you feel about me. How you honestly feel about me. Don't sugar coat anything.”

I felt him shifting his weight underneath me.

“Rowena—I want you to know that I—” He swallowed and closed his eyes.

“I'm…” The expression on his face froze in place. I felt him holding his breath.

“I'm in love with you,” he blurted out and his face turned bright red.

“You are?” I sputtered, shocked.

“Yes.” He opened his eyes. I felt his heart hammering inside of his chest. “Deeply in love with you. I've been in love with you. When we met each other, I thought you were the most beautiful girl I'd ever seen. And then you watched Ivan draw me. I think it had to do with the fact before you showed up, I always thought I was too big and there was no way anyone could love me and find this—” He placed a hand on his big belly rising from underneath the covers. “—this right here attractive. I wanted to kiss you at one point. Ivan actually dared me to do it at point but I never could. We both felt weird thinking that way about you. I also don't want to ruin the friendship between the three of us. I love you but I also love Ivan. The two of you are the best friends I could've ever asked for.”

I was stunned. I remembered all of our interactions, from the day we met to all the hugs he had ever given me. I always felt comfortable with Ivan but I guess I missed Vincent's love.

I caressed the warm skin on his chest. I glanced back up at his soft, sweet face before reaching up and gently pushing the hair back from his eyes. I pressed my hand against the side of his neck.

“Oh, you sweet, beautiful man. I love you, too.” I closed my eyes and lightly kissed him on the lips, once, twice, five times, the first time I ever kissed anyone. I was in love with my best friend. I pressed my hands on either side of his full face and kissed him another three times. I felt his hand gliding down my back towards my hips and then reach up to switch off the light. I lay my head down on his chest and closed my eyes. He cleared his throat as we snuggled down in bed together. I loved Vincent so much. I wanted to be with him forever.


	18. The Nurse Who Loved Me

An enormous solid black tree with thick scraggly branches and crimson red leaves loomed in front of me. The leaves rustled in the breeze as the tree appeared to be moving closer to me. A nearby branch pointed out from above my head like the front bow of a ghost ship.

Something big and round and tapered off at the bottom hung off the branch. As it came into view, I recognized grainy blue skin. It was an apple, albeit one the size of my head, looming above my brow. Little paper lanterns began to float around the apple and drift into the dark sky. Something billowed down from a higher branch, something with a loop. That noose came for me pretty soon. I was unable to run.

I shot my eyes open. Pale gray light filtered through the window opposite me. I was in Vincent's apartment, back in his warm bed and right next to him. He had rolled over onto his side but I hugged his waist. Every so often, he let out a light snore. I slid my hand underneath the covers to feel that soft, smooth skin on his belly. My feet were like ice so I pulled up my knees. I inched closer to him and relished in his warmth.

“Rowena—” he coaxed me, nudging me.

“Yes, my love?” I sweetly asked him.

“I can't breathe.” I loosened my grip and lightly kissed him on the neck. He sighed through his nose with a smile.

“Did you sleep alright?” I whispered.

“I did,” his voice was muffled by the pillow. “Better than I have in a while, I might add.”

“I don't want to leave this spot right here,” I admitted. “This feels like home right here.”

He glanced down to his feet. “Did it snow last night?” he wondered aloud. His eyes pinched shut from the gray light.

“I don't know. It'd be the first time I've ever really seen snow, though.”

“Jesus, it's freezing in here. What time is it—?” He stared up at the wall clock. “Eight fifteen? Five more minutes,” he insisted, laying his head back down.

“Five more minutes,” I echoed, lightly stroking his chest. “I forgot to ask, when do you start school?”

“Monday. I have report writing class first thing, about forty eight hours from now. I'll enjoy this right here, though.” I felt him stroke the back of my hand. “I'm hungry, though.”

“I need to put my socks on, too,” I added, “my feet are so cold.”

He glanced back at me, befuddled. “So I keep the rest of you warm but not your feet? I don't get you, Red-hot Rowena.”

I chuckled as I let him go and rolled over onto my back. I swung my legs out from underneath the covers and goose pimples covered my skin. I scurried over the icy cold floor to the bathroom to put my pants on. Vincent heavily padded into the kitchen while buttoning up another black knit sweatshirt.

“Where's that spare toothbrush?” I asked him.

“Oh, it's the blue one next to the faucet. Still in its cellophane. The toothpaste is in the medicine cabinet still in its box.” He opened the refrigerator door. “We forgot to get more cream yesterday and I thought we did. I'll see if Red has some because I know how you like your coffee.” He returned to the bed for a pair of black knit socks.

“Red?”

“My landlady,” he replied, standing to his feet, “she's got the cutest little dog, I swear to God. Fredrick, I think is his name.”

“Oh, I saw her last night! She told me where you're at.” He grinned at that as he opened the door and stepped into the stairwell. The entire apartment was left silent except for my brushing my teeth.

The dream was still fresh in my mind. The noose baffled me more than the lanterns or the apple. I hoped nothing terrible was about to happen as I mapped out a return to Monterey for my belongings, and then back to Oregon to start a new chapter with the love of my life. The front door opened again as I rinsed out my mouth. He poked his head into the bathroom and showed me a little glass jar filled with pearly white cream.

“We're good to go,” he informed me, beaming, “and—look out the window.”

I set down the toothbrush and rushed into the main room to open the curtains. I gasped in awe at the blanket of snow covering everything. Faint tire treads crossed over each other on the pavement down below and ran up the side street. The houses across the street made me think of gingerbread houses; “White Christmas” started playing in my head and I playfully rubbed my arms.

He had disappeared into the kitchen to brew a pot of coffee. The top of the coffee maker snapped shut; there was a brief pause before he spoke again.

“Rowena, can I tell you something?”

“You're my best friend—you can ask me anything.” He returned to the room with a warm blush to his face.

“Have a seat.” I sat down on the foot of the warm bed. He slouched down next to me.

“What is it?” I gently asked him, touching his left hand.

“I'm going to be really honest with you here—Rowena—em—” He stared at me with a hurt expression. “I think you're more of Ivan's girl,” he blurted out.

“Y-You do?” I sputtered.

“Yeah.” He licked his bottom lip.

“How?”

“I've seen how he looks at you. How he treats you. Every kind word, every hug, every glimmer in his eye. He is head over heels in love with you. But, it's just what I said last night, I'm in love you but I also love Ivan. You're my best friends. I can't do that to him. I mean… if you want to be with me, know—please know—I'd love to have you. If anything, I want you. Last year, there were days I felt so lonely. I missed you. My parents and Grandma Slate all love you and we've known each other for a long time. I want you here with me, as my girlfriend and perhaps, just perhaps—” He took my hand.

“—if you feel up to it, I'd love to make you my wife. But I was also thinking about this when I went downstairs. I'm at a crossroads: it's either go into a gorgeous relationship with you or be devoted to school. My counselor told me the courses are harder this year. To be honest, I—I've been on such a winning streak I wouldn't be able to enjoy something between us if I threw it away. I also feel your heart is with Ivan. I can feel it.”

“But—I want you, though,” I insisted, placing a hand on his chest.

“I know you do,” he reached up and touched my hand. “I want you, too. I'm gonna say this now: I'm yours, all yours for the taking. You can stay with me forever and you know I'd be the proudest bastard in Klamath County. But there's school and there's Ivan. You don't see it yet, but give it time. It took me five years to admit I love you because I wasn't sure if it was love.”

“Vincent—” My voice broke as he lightly pressed his soft lips against mine. I blinked back the tears as his fingers softly stroked my back. He gazed into my eyes and ran a hand through my hair.

“Rowena… darling, you're not going to hurt me. You're my best friend. You want to know something? I feel like a man when I'm with you. I feel sexy when I'm with you. You know, you've seen me blush, you make me hot! If anything—” He glanced off the side. “—I think you'd find me sexy if I'm a hundred pounds and my ribs are sticking out or if I'm five hundred pounds and I've got rolls in places where there shouldn't be. I'm willing to let you go to Ivan because you are the love of my life and I want to see you happy.” He kissed me again and held me against his chest. I kept my arms around his beautiful soft waist.

“And it's me or school,” my voice was muffled by his chest.

“It's you or school,” he echoed. “I feel terrible because I can't choose both, as much as I so desparately wish I could. But I'll give you this, though, because everything is so unpredictable—” I stared up at him with tears in my eyes.

“If my hunches are wrong, and things don't work out between you—or in the instance he never comes home, but I doubt it because he's not infantry—you know where to find me.” The coffee maker made a little _ding!_ just as he kissed me again, this time for a bit longer before holding me again. I let out a low sob.

“Don't cry,” he coaxed me. He clasped his hands on either side of my face. Tears brimmed his eyes. “Rowena, please don't cry. If there's anyone who should be crying, it should be me.” We held each other for a long time and I wept into his shirt before he let me go. Gasping for air, he brushed away the tears with the back of his hand.

“Would you like some coffee?” he offered me in a broken voice.

“You know I would.”

I decided to leave on Sunday because we never watched _Saturday Night Live_ together. I wasn't willing to risk walking in the snow in my Chuck Taylors so we had a nice warm dinner of penne and tomato sauce in the apartment.

We turned in at one o'clock and he held me from behind as we lay in bed. I awoke to his arms tightly wrapped around my waist. We spent more time together before I walked to the bus stop at five to catch the next bus to the train station. He really was my love. I wanted to be close to his warm heart forever.

But I needed to go back to Monterey. I put the toothbrush and toothpaste into a little bag and then my purse. I slipped on my shirt underneath the button down and my coat.

“Rowena—before you leave, I want to give you something.” He opened the top drawer of the dresser. He dug beneath some shirts before revealing a book with an olive green dust jacket. He wiped off the top surface with his palm before handing it to me.

“ _The Poems of Emily Dickinson_ ,” I read the silver typewriter style title on the front cover.

“When I got out of the hospital, Grandma Slate came from Santa Fe to visit me. She got this book from an old friend, who told her to give it to me. She wrote about solitude and the delicateness of life, but her poems gave me a lot of strength. It felt like—she understood what I dealt with at the time.”

I held it against my chest.

“Another thing I want to tell you—” he stepped closer to me, “—and you heard this from me—when I was in recovery, I figured my worst fear is dying alone without ever knowing what means to feel romantic love for someone.”

He kissed me one last time. I could feel the gentle bristle of incoming stubble on his upper lip. I lightly touched his chest until he pulled back. He glanced up at the wall clock and sighed.

“The bus will be there soon. You want to be on the coming side of the street. Remember—if Ivan doesn't come home or if it doesn't work out between you—you know where to find me.”

He winked at me before I headed out the door with my purse over my shoulder and the book pressed against my chest. I already missed his softness as I stared up at the darkening blue sky. The sun dipped behind a bank of clouds piled before the mountains. Careful so as not to slip on the slick sidewalk, I strode towards the corner and crossed the street after looking both ways. I padded up the street to a white metal bench partially covered in snow and a pole topped with a bright blue square. I stood next to the pole and shivered, from the wind and the fact I was alone again.

I missed him, his kiss, and his touch. I kept the book pressed against my chest as I opened my purse for two quarters in the side of my wallet. I thought of withdrawing money from the machine in the lobby. The low blue and white bus with a vast windshield and tinted windows lumbered up to the sidewalk and screeched to a stop at the curb. The folding doors squeaked open to show a white haired older gentleman with sunglasses and a bright blue windbreaker at the wheel.

“Are you going to the train station?” I kindly asked him as I dropped two quarters into the glass box next to him.

“I am, yes,” he promptly replied with a slight smile. I planted myself in one of the seats beneath the window right as the bus plodded forward. We turned the corner to the stoplight to make the left turn. I wanted to shed a tear as we passed by Blackburn Manor. Every so often, I took a whiff of the shirt collar to smell him again, that warm combination of chile peppers, soap, and lavender.

I refused to believe he pushed me away. I wanted him to be happy. I understood the pain of coming this far only to have it abruptly end, so I agreed with him. I wanted us to always be friends, too.

I peered out the window at Mount Shasta, the cold dark blue monolith standing alone to the south of us. As we neared the train station, I decided to give Ivan a chance. I missed him, too.

I thanked the driver as I returned to the cold evening and crossed the parking lot for a ticket and fifty dollars. There was another hour before the train departed so I sat in one of the wooden benches and opened to the end of the book to “Unable are the Loved to die.” He and I were both loved, but I wondered if we were going to be remembered by those other than our families.

The image of Patrick vanishing from school had become a vague, distant memory. One part that stuck out to me was my writing that question in French class “ _Qui se souviendra de toi?_ ” I knew he never saw it, but I promised Patrick to always remember him. I replayed the memory as I stood to my feet and scurried to the second car of the train.

I took the seat next to the window on the right side. I recalled Mr. Crowe's title for me: “ _tacet adiutor_ ” or silent helper, because I helped out when no one paid attention. If no one remembered my name or my appearance, but rather how they feel, I would die knowing they knew me.

I slept all the way down to Sacramento with my feet up on the vacant seat next to me. The gentle swaying of the train rocked me to sleep after we left Dunsmuir. I never woke up until we pulled into the big train station, when the sun rose again. I waited an hour onboard before we headed for San Jose.

I bought myself a cup of coffee and a chocolate scone for breakfast. I stared out the window to the little plumes of fog filtering in from the ocean. There was still just so much I wanted to do with Ivan and Vincent. I wanted to tell Ivan to come back home and run back to Vincent and then we could go camping again or see the Chili Peppers together.

We arrived in Salinas at noon and I sprinted for the bus. The memory of the court case and Mark rushing us back home haunted me like an old scar. We arrived at Monterey Airport in an hour; the car stood parked in the front row by itself.

I unlocked the door and placed the book and my purse on the passenger seat before I climbed in behind the wheel. After adjusting the seat, I drove straight home. I unlocked the front door and stumbled into the living room, closing the door behind me.

I set the book and my purse down on the couch, before peeling off my coat, Vincent's shirt, and my shirt, then placed the shirts on the couch before going into the bathroom. I untied my shoes, removed my socks, then my jeans and my underwear. It was only a quick shower, quick enough so that it felt like shedding skin: I shut off the water and dried my hair after a few minutes. I strode across the hall for clean underwear.

Something on the windowsill caught my eye. I slid the window open to find a folded over note. I opened the note to see neat, clean cursive handwriting, so clean I swore it was typed up on my typewriter: “Your pellis is on the shed.” I raised an eyebrow as I closed the window and set the note on my desk.

I put on a clean black camisole, clean black jeans, and clean socks before lacing up my Chuck Taylors again. I headed down the hallway and then outside to the backyard. The shed door stood wide open. A cold chill swept over my body. I had a bad feeling about this. I stared at the door before crossing the yard.

I peered inside the shed to see everything still in place and intact from the last time Dad shut the door. It felt like something was missing. I thought about that note and that penmanship.

I pushed the shed door closed as best as I could before I returned to the house to turn up the heat and get something to eat.

I began to miss my parents at the sight of the kitchen. I missed the sugary smell of freshly picked Patterson Peaches, the aroma of lemon zest on a pie, the warm smell of dinner, and of course, Mom's perfume and Dad's cologne. I opened the pantry to find a big can of chicken and rice soup in front of my face. I opened the refrigerator for something, but the shelves were barren save for three peaches and two avocados on the top shelf. I decided on the soup and heated it in a pot on the stove.

I heard a light tap on the window. Someone taped a white piece of paper on the outside. Since the sun began to shine through the window, I crept closer to better read the note, once again written in painstakingly neat cursive: “Your sanguis is on the dexter side.”

“Dexter side?” I muttered aloud. I returned to the stove. I thought about the first note “Your pellis is on the shed” pointing me to the shed outside, but this baffled me. “Sanguis” is Latin for blood and the dexter, or right, side of the heart was smaller and weaker than the left, or sinister side. Blood goes out on the dexter side and enters on the sinister side.

I removed the soup from the burner. I reached into the cupboard for a clean bowl and carefully poured the hot soup inside.

“My skin is on the shed,” I kept thinking out loud as I got out a clean spoon. I sat down at the table with the bowl of soup, not hesitating to swallow down the chunks of chicken with the grains of wild rice, celery, and carrots. I remembered Dad telling me to buy a new lock for the shed because we finally threw the other one away and thus the door hung wide open when I got home. My skin was on the shed. Was that a way of blaming me for forgetting the shed? My blood was going out on the dexter side and coming in on the sinister side. I realized what was missing from the shed.

“The hedge clippers!” I declared, my voice echoing off the walls of the dining room. I inserted the spoon into my mouth.

“Going out,” I repeated, this time with my mouth full. “No, coming in. Sinister—” I noticed the note still taped there on the outside looking into my safe little world. I kept staring at the note as I wolfed down my soup, and washed out the bowl and the pan before returning them to the cupboards. The hedge clippers were missing and someone was blaming me for leaving the shed door open.

I was alone in a place where everyone I knew was gone. Someone blamed me for leaving it open. What if it was the Orion Colony accusing me? I knew what Mom meant by feeling unsafe. I needed to leave. I needed to find a place where I felt safe. I wouldn't know where to seek asylum but I needed to leave Monterey. I darted down the hall to my room. I would take what I had for the time being and returning later when I felt safe.

I packed my clothes in my overnight bag, all of my dresses, blouses, and underwear. I ran back into the kitchen for two garbage bags to protect my high heeled boots and my red typewriter before lugging it all out to the truck.

There was another white note tucked into the windshield wiper on the driver's side, but I needed to tend to myself: I unlocked the back hatch and the tailgate, and slid my overnight bag across the bed to the far corner and carefully did the same for the garbage bags. I quickly returned to the house for my serape blanket; I chucked it on top of the bags before closing the tailgate and the back hatch. I made a third trip for my courier bag, now emptied of school supplies. I seized my copies of _Blood Sugar Sex Magik_ , _Rumours_ , _In Utero_ , and _Superunknown_ off the desk and tucked them inside, followed by Ivan's Valentine's card. I picked my photographs of Keanu Reeves, Darrell Hammond, and Dana Carvey off the nightstand and put them inside as well.

I tucked my pillow under my arm as I felt tears brimming my eyes again. I switched off the light before returning down the hall to put Vincent's shirt and my jacket back on. I unplugged the phone with my free hand.

I placed the courier bag and the pillow on the passenger seat before heading back to the house for one last trip.

I slung my purse over my shoulder and fetched the avocados, which I put in my coat pocket, and the peaches, which I placed on top of the book which I pressed to my chest.

I took one last look at the house, the house I grew up in, the house I was leaving behind, before I switched off the lamp. I closed the front door and, still using my free hand, I locked it shut.

The sun began to hang low over the horizon, giving me enough light to tuck the book in between my purse and the courier bag to keep the peaches in place. I opened the glove compartment to find two brown napkins to wrap up the avocados and gently placed them next to the peaches. Before I climbed into the driver's seat, I checked that third note on my windshield. Still in neat cursive handwriting, it read: “Your ossium are anesthetized.”

“Ossium”. Bones. I folded up the note and placed it onto the dashboard as I climbed into the driver's seat. I backed out of the driveway for the final time. I shifted into first gear and drifted down the street. I decided to make one quick stop before I left the Peninsula.

I parked in front of the house on the corner, the first time in a couple of years. The windows were still pitch black. I climbed out of the truck and ducked around the side of the house to the backyard. I peeked around the corner at the sight of weeds sprouting from the gravel.

I ducked underneath the back window, even though the house was empty. I noticed the rusty doorknob straight ahead. I had seen it once before I never used it. Carefully, I set my hand on the doorknob and the door creaked open to the dining room and the kitchen. Newspapers still covered the floor.

“Hello?” I called, my voice echoing off the barren walls. I crept into the cold room, cold front the plastic sheet being the only thing separating the house from the outside. The soles of my shoes quietly crinkled on the newspapers. I was about to call out again when I reached the living room.

“HOLY GOD!” I shouted, clasping my hands to my mouth.

Alastair reclined in the chair. His bald head was battered with pitch black contusions on top of contusions, but his pallid skin had dried out. His mouth hung open. Someone placed two fifty cent pieces over his eyes; I realized his robe was caked in blood. Mom's hedge clippers stuck straight out of the left, or sinister, side of his chest. He was dead.

“Rowena—” a voice behind me whispered. I yelped out again as I whirled around at the person lurking in the shadows. Darkness blanketed half of his body, but in the dim light, I recognized his black hair, now stringy and at his shoulders. His face withered and emeciated to where it resembled a skull: his eyes deeply sank back into his head. He wore tattered and filthy black clothes and a pair of blue latex gloves on his hands. He reeked of sweat, dirt, and detergent.

“I was wanting you to come here,” he told me in that gentle monotone.

“What—What—” I could scarcely find the right words. I briefly peered back at Alastair's bloody corpse.

“What did you do!” I managed to choke out.

“I wanted you here with me, just to show you what you and I've done together. I escaped the halfway house to finish what I started. It was transforming. But I managed to come home, Rowena.”

“Yes, but—what did you do?” I repeated, my voice breaking.

“Rowena—” He took a step closer. Splatters of blood covered his gaunt face and narrow neck, so narrow his Adam's apple poked out like a jagged rock.

“See—I returned two days ago, right in front of the school, after hitchhiking with an amiable truck driver who gave me two fifty cent pieces and told me to care for myself. It was after school because no one was there except the janitor. When his back was turned, I nicked a pair of latex gloves, the ones we wore in AP biology dissections. At that point, the sun set and I crept through the shadows to your house. I planned on begging for your parents' help but no one was home. The door was locked and the lights were off. I crept around the side of the house, just like you did, to find the shed door hanging open. It was a godsend: Rowena left the shed open for me. I hid out in there for a whole day. I was hungry, cold, and caked in soil, and I waited for you to come home and take care of me. But I needed to finish what I started. I grabbed the hedge clippers and came back here. Alastair sat in the chair just blankly gazing on at the wall. He had those strange bruises on his head. I asked what happened and he said some punk kid kicked him in the head several times with the same shoes you're wearing. He asked me why I wasn't wasting away in the halfway home. I stared into his cold, dead eyes and told him 'you have murdered me and now I'm doing the same for you.' I took the hedge clippers and drove them… seven times straight into his sinister side. He collapsed right there. And your father and the judge wanted me back in the halfway house.”

“Seven times! Forget the halfway house—you could go to prison for this!”

“Nonsense.” I glanced down at the latex gloves on his hands and felt a strange comfort. He knew what he was doing.

“Rowena,” he lowered his voice to a near whisper, “he was going to kill you. He was going to kill you, your whole family, and your friends. I wasn't going to let him despite the betrayal. That halfway home was a prison in and of itself. I've done my time.”

“Betrayal?” My eyes brimmed with tears and I turned back around to face Alastair's sanguinary corpse. The latex snapped and he rested a clammy hand on my shoulder.

“Listen. Whenever Alastair stood ready with his hand held high against our Aunt Chris' face, I wanted to run. Run so far away. When he set me free, I could only run to my room. I hid out there so many times but he still threw punches, drove something somewhere into my body, stuck my finger into one of the electrical sockets when the power was on, or hit me. Then he'd blame me. It was my fault. I'd scream and no one would hear me. It was a routine, happening when no one was watching. If my mother was a witness like you, she wouldn't have allowed me here. But I met you. You unlocked a power in me. The power of freedom. Now, because of you, I have the freedom to see a man and wonder how he'd look with something sharp sticking through his sternum. I don't know if you know this, but every man, woman, and child has the power to kill another man, woman, and child. Living with Alastair has forced me to realize I have that power hidden within the depths of this hideous body, this bag of defected human condition. He was the force, but Rowena, you gave me a voice. A voice to that instinct. Yet, I will not hurt you, and I never could because you're the nurse. The nurse who loved me. The nurse who loved me and gave me anesthesia from the pain I've felt for so long.”

The house fell silent except for my own anxious breathing and the plastic sheet crinkling in the cold wind.

“I want you to go,” he ordered, still in a low voice. “Far away. Run away like I never could. Run away and anesthetize yourself. Please, Rowena.” He removed his hand from my shoulder.

“But—where are you going to go? What are you going to do?” I stammered. I was answered with silence.

“Patrick?” I turned my head to see he had disappeared. I was alone in the living room with Alastair's bloody corpse. I stared at the unhealed contusions all around his head where Mark kicked him the year before. I had another bad feeling. I darted towards the plastic sheet. When I reached the sheet, I smelled smoke. I turned my head at the faint orange and yellow glimmers of light reflecting off dining room wall. He set the newspapers on fire.

“Patrick Ravens!” I shouted.

“I'm no longer Patrick Ravens,” he shouted from the back of the house. The flames quickly spread into the living room. “I'm Patrick Silversmith, after the elderly woman Alastair could never love in a thousand years.” The smoke detector down the hall shrieked out like a broken doomsday siren, starting low moaning into a high hollow, soulless whine.

I sprinted out of there, through the plastic sheet and across the front yard to the truck. I dove behind the steering wheel right as the sheet caught on fire. I believed he would run out of there, but he told me to leave. The pavement started growing dark with stretched shadows from the low hanging sun. Sirens wailed off in the distance.

“I am ghost girl. I am a ghost,” I announced aloud, switching on the engine. “I am ghost girl. I am a ghost. I was asked to leave and never return. I am a ghost—and I'm not afraid to die.”

I sped down Monroe towards Herrmann. I wound past the high school where the fire engines and the ambulances screeching past me in a bright, loud blur. I had to leave California. Portland was out of the question, especially since my parents wanted me away from there. Aside from that, Vincent was up to his eyeballs in schoolwork, Aunt Indigo needed to hide, I had no way of contacting Ivan, and Mark disappeared.

I started down the Highway 1. I needed to make a second stop before crossing into the Central Valley. I never glanced into my rear view mirrors as I followed the highway towards the turn off to Nacimiento Road.

I wound into the mountain pass, to that drop off in the road, the one with the little white cross planted in front of the guard rail. I merged off the road and parked onto the damp dirt. The cross and the calavera still stood erect. I climbed out of the truck and knelt before the cross. I kissed my fingertips and pressed them against the painted letters.

“Good bye, Dad,” I whispered as the wind picked up. “ _Visam te illinc_.”

I quickly returned to the truck, and sped away from there.

I refused to believe Patrick's claim I gave him a voice. He had a voice and a mind of his own whereas I helped him like a good nurse. I helped him. I silently helped him. But his fate was sealed.

As I dropped into the eastern side of the Santa Lucia Mountains, I figured there was a silver lining in Alastair's death: the hedge clippers could not trace back to my parents. For all the authorities knew, he was murdered by a ghost.

I kept driving through dark wooded hills until I reached the Central Valley. By then, the sun had set and the cars whizzed past me in bright red and yellow blurs. I hummed along the Interstate 5 until I reached Bakersfield, where the orange streetlamps along the sides of the freeway filtered into the truck all the way to the heart of the city.

I drove along the highway going into the mountains. I knew this would eventually take me out of California. I zipped past dimly lit side streets, towering oil rigs, bushy orange groves, and low, monotonous crop fields before reaching dried up foothills. I ascended into mountains blanketed in brush and scraggly oak trees, past all the big rigs and the cars filled with people with stories unknown to me.

I reached the top of the hill and the small town of Tehachapi for gas and a snack. I merged off the first offramp and wound down a two lane road past a mound of dirt and an overpass towards the first stoplight. I caught the light green and continued into town. I was amazed by all of the vast, vacant lots and the lack of life despite it being early evening.

I pulled into the first gas station on the corner ahead and took the first spot before the mini mart. I opened my purse and noticed the little Buddha at the bottom, the one Ivan and Vincent gave me. I stared at it for a minute before I took my purse inside with me. I needed something to tithe me over until I arrived in Barstow.

A black haired heavyset woman about my age sat on a stool behind the counter reading a book. She tucked her bookmark inside as soon as she saw me.

“Twenty dollars on number four, please,” I politely ordered. She rang me up as I picked two little bags of cashews off the rack.

“Are you from around here? I haven't seen you before,” her voice was velvety and low.

“No, I'm from Monterey. I'm on a road trip and just passing through.”

“Oh, where you going?”

“I'm not sure.” I thought about it for a minute. “Probably Arizona. Flagstaff area.”

“Oh, I love the Four Corner States. Got family there?”

“No. No, I'm making a fresh start.”

“Really? Well, take it from me: those mountains are beautiful but they get cold, especially in the next month or so.”

“I got a camper shell and lots of blankets.” I missed Vincent's warmth so much at the moment.

“Good thinking.” She charged me a couple of dollars for the cashews. “You know, I've been thinking of doing that myself. Turning over a new leaf. Might as well. It'll be a new year soon and in a couple of years, it'll be a new millennium.”

“A clean slate for everyone,” I replied, handing her two dollars and she handed me the change.

“Exactly! You take care of yourself.”

I headed back out the door to fill up the tank. Soon, I climbed back into the truck and merged onto the freeway for the long trip. The highway was completely dark by the time I reached the mining town of Boron. One thing that will always haunt me about Patrick was how he saw me as anesthesia and the aunt he never had. I had become Aunt Anesthesia, a silent helper, a ghost, just me and the stars.


End file.
